| Quote | Author | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
I stress that the universe is made mostly of nothing, that something is the exception. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006) |
We are star stuff pondering the stars. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | paraphrase : Cosmos (1980) |
All things are borne of nothing and are borne onwards to infinity. |
Blaise Pascal | 1623 – 1662 | |
There is only one kind of stuff in the universe and it is physical. Out of this stuff comes minds, beauty, emotions, moral values – in short the full gamut of phenomena that gives richness to human life. |
Julian Baggini | born 1968 | |
That all things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain. |
Francis Bacon | 1561 – 1626 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Matter is composed chiefly of nothing. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | Cosmos (1980) |
Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen. |
Bill Bryson | born 1951 | A Short History of Nearly Everything |
If there’s nothing in here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more? |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006) |
There is only one sort of stuff, namely matter – the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology. |
Daniel C. Dennett | born 1942 | |
The laws of physics have conspired to make the collisions of atoms produce plants, kangaroos, insects and us. |
Richard Dawkins | born 1941 | |
All of reality is nothing more than the arrangement of particles. Our physical and mental life must be made out of particles because the is nothing else. |
Christopher Potter | born 1959 | |
When Bishop Berkeley said ‘there was no matter’, And proved it—’twas no matter what he said. |
Lord Byron | 1788 – 1824 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
What is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the elements arise. |
Anaximander | c 610 – c 546 BC |