Brian Greene

I've had various experiences where I've been called by Hollywood studios to look at a script or comment on various scientific ideas that they're trying to inject into a story. ”

I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence. ”

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. ”

By dimension, we simply mean an independent direction in which, in principle, you can move; in which motion can take place. In an everyday world, we have left-right as one dimension; we have back-forth as a second one; and we have up-down as a third. ”

The main challenge that television presents is that I have a tendency to say things with a great deal of precision and accuracy. Often a description of that sort, which will work in a book because people can read it slowly - they can turn the pages back and so on - doesn't really work on TV because it interrupts the flow of the moving image. ”

The absolute worst thing that you ever can do, in my opinion, in bringing science to the general public, is be condescending or judgmental. It is so opposite to the way science needs to be brought forth. ”

One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease. ”

Oftentimes, if you're talking to a seasoned interviewer who asks you a question, they may do a follow-up if they didn't quite get it. It's rare that they'll do a third or fourth or fifth or sixth follow-up, because there's an implicit, agreed-upon decorum that they move on. Kids don't necessarily move on if they don't get it. ”

In any finite region of space, matter can only arrange itself in a finite number of configurations, just as a deck of cards can be arranged in only finitely many different orders. If you shuffle the deck infinitely many times, the card orderings must necessarily repeat. ”

Many different planets are many different distances from their host star; we find ourselves at this distance because if we were closer or farther away, the temperature would be hotter or colder, eliminating liquid water, an essential ingredient for our survival. ”