Lisa Randall Quotes

Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.

When it comes to the world around us, is there any choice but to explore?

It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

An almost indispensable skill for any creative person is the ability to pose the right questions. Creative people identify promising, exciting, and, most important, accessible routes to progress - and eventually formulate the questions correctly.

The universe has its secrets. Extra dimensions of space might be one of them. If so, the universe has been hiding those dimensions, protecting them, keeping them coyly under wraps. From a casual glance, you would never suspect a thing.

Basically, I wasn't properly socialized, so it made sense to do physics.

We certainly don't yet know all the answers. But the universe is about to be pried open.

You might find it hard to imagine gravity as a weak force, but consider that a small magnet can hold up a paper clip, even though the entire earth is pulling down on it.

Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress.

One of the nice things about math and science is it’s obvious, you get the answer or you don’t get the answer.

Travel at faster than the speed of light certainly can have dramatic implications that are difficult to understand, such as time travel.

Faith just doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing as a scientist. It's nice if you can believe in God, because then you see more of a purpose in things. Even if you don't, though, it doesn't mean that there's no purpose. It doesn't mean that there's no goodness. I think that there's a virtue in being good in and of itself. I think that one can work with the world we have.

I think it's a problem that people are considered immoral if they're not religious. That's just not true. If you do something for a religious reason, you do it because you'll be rewarded in an afterlife or in this world. That's not quite as good as something you do for purely generous reasons.

Secrets of the cosmos will begin to unravel. I, for one, can't wait.

Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.

Scientific research involves going beyond the well-trodden and well-tested ideas and theories that form the core of scientific knowledge. During the time scientists are working things out, some results will be right, and others will be wrong. Over time, the right results will emerge.

When people try to use religion to address the natural world, science pushes back on it, and religion has to accommodate the results. Beliefs can be permanent, but beliefs can also be flexible. Personally, if I find out my belief is wrong, I change my mind. I think that's a good way to live.

We should figure out how to do this so that some parents don't feel disenfranchised, angry and upset. It says a lot about the state of where we are in the city, the role of parents and the reality of small school and combining schools.

I did not set out to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs. I'm a particle physicist, and I was actually thinking about dark matter along with some collaborators.

There is real confusion about what it means to be right and wrong - the difference between what spiritual beliefs are and what science is.

Sometimes models are surprisingly smart.

All the normal matter in the Milky Way disc is denser than the dark matter that surrounds it.

I'm not creating the universe. I'm creating a model of the universe, which may or may not be true.

If such external influences are intrinsic to religion, then logic and scientific thought dictate that there must be a mechanism by which this influence is transmitted. A religious or spiritual belief that involves an invisible undetectable force that nonetheless influences human actions and behavior or that of the world itself produces a situation in which a believer has no choice but to have faith and abandon logic--or simply not care.

Maybe dark matter is denser than we usually assume, kind of like the Milky Way plane.