Best 39 quotes of Brian Cox on MyQuotes

An explorer of the universe is sexier than a musician.

At every stage of understanding the universe better, the benefits to civilisation have been immeasurable. None of those big leaps were made with us knowing what was going to happen.

Climate change: Don't undermine the science just because you don't like the economics

Deeper understanding confers that most precious thing - wonder.

Don't undermine the science just because you don't like the economics. That's a dangerous slope, because the problem of course is you're not undermining just that, you're undermining the basis of rational decision-making in society.

Every carbon atom in every living thing on the planet was produced in the heart of a dying star.

Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.

For me, Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' defines New York. Both New York and Manhattan Island should be in black in white! I always hear the soundtrack of Gershwin in my head every time I go over the Queensboro Bridge, or come in from JFK because of it!

For the first time, we saw our world, not as a solid, immovable, kind of indestructible place, but as a very small, fragile-looking world just hanging against the blackness of space.

If people don’t have an understanding of what science is and what scientists do, then they can tend to think that global warming, for example, is just a matter of opinion.

In a sense I feel very much a part of the cinema now in a way where when I come back to the theater now I feel like a visitor. The cinema is really what I enjoy. I want to do more independent movies.

In science, there are no universal truths, just views of the world that have yet to be shown to be false.

It would be wonderful if ideas could be the new rock 'n roll

Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe's distant past.

Look at that! If you ever needed convincing that we live in the solar system, that we are on a ball of rock, orbiting around the Sun with other balls of rock, then look at that! That's the solar system coming down and grabbing you by the throat.

No one gets teased for being a geek anymore- science is the new rock n roll

One might say science is the sum total of our knowledge of the universe, the great library of the known, but the practice of science happens at the border between the known and the unknown. Standing on the shoulders of giants, we peer into the darkness with eyes opened not in fear but in wonder.

(On the energy radiated by the Sun) It's four hundred million million million million watts. That is a million times the power consumption of the United States every year, radiated in one second, and we worked that out by using some water, a thermometer, a tin, and an umbrella. And that's why I love physics.

Science is about exploring, and the only way to uncover the secrets of the universe is to go and look.

Science is too important not to be a part of popular culture.

Skepticism must go hand in hand with rationality. When theories are shown to be false, the correct thing to do is to move on.

[The 1975 Chase Econometrics] showed that for every one dollar spent on Apollo, 14 came back into the U.S. economy.

The aim of particle physics is to understand what everything’s made of, and how everything sticks together. By everything I mean me and you, the Earth, the Sun, the 100 billion suns in our galaxy and the 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Absolutely everything.

The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!

The fact is that Hollywood, from as early as the sixties to the present time, has ghettoized cinema into the big industry, a marketing industry. In doing this, the audiences have lost touch with the aspects of film which were to be informative and educational and even spiritual.

The story of the universe finally comes to an end. For the first time in its life, the universe will be permanent and unchanging. Entropy finally stops increasing because the cosmos cannot get any more disordered. Nothing happens, and it keeps not happening, forever. It's what's known as the heat-death of the universe. An era when the cosmos will remain vast and cold and desolate for the rest of time the arrow of time has simply ceased to exist. It's an inescapable fact of the universe written into the fundamental laws of physics, the entire cosmos will die.

We explore because we are curious, not because we wish to develop grand views of reality or better widgets.

We have written the evidence of our existence onto the surface of our planet. Our civilisation has become a beacon, that identifies our planet as home to life.

What scientists are attached to is journeys into the unknown and discovering things that are completely unexpected and baffling and surprising.

When you fall into a black hole you will be literally spaghettified.

You dig deeper and it gets more and more complicated, and you get confused, and it's tricky and it's hard, but... It is beautiful.

I believe powerfully that we who have the power should strive to extend the gift of education to everyone. Education is the most important investment a developed society can make, and the most effective way of nurturing a developing one.

I'm comfortable with the unknown -- that's the point of science. There are places out there, billions of places out there, that we know nothing about. And the fact that we know nothing about them excites me, and I want to go out and find out about them. And that's what science is. So I think if you’re not comfortable with the unknown, then it’s difficult to be a scientist… I don’t need an answer. I don’t need answers to everything. I want to have answers to find.

The last remaining matter in the universe will reside within black dwarves. We can predict how they will end their days. The last matter of the universe will evaporate away and be carried off into the void as radiation leaving absolutely nothing behind. There won’t be a single atom left; all that’s left will be particles of light and black holes. After an unimaginable period even the black holes will have evaporated; the universe will be nothing but a sea of photons gradually tending to the same temperature as the expansion of the universe cools them towards absolute zero. The story of the universe will come to an end. For the first time in its life the universe will be permanent and unchanging. Entropy will finally stop increasing because the cosmos cannot get any more disordered. Nothing happens and it keeps not happening for ever. There is no difference between past present and future, nothing changes, arrow of time has simply ceased to exist. It is an inescapable fact written into the laws of physics that entire cosmos will die; all the stars will go out extinguishing possibility of life in the universe.

There are three known planets in the PSR B1257 system, which have been named Draugr, Poltergeist and Phobetor. Poltergeist was the first to be discovered. I know, I was curious about their names as well. Poletrgeist means "pounding ghost". The draugr are the unded in Norse legends who live in their graves. And Phobetor is the personification of nightmares, and the son of Nyx, Greek goddess of the night. Astronomers are goths.

The scientific creation story has majesty, power and beauty. and is infused with a powerful message capable of lifting our spirits in a way that its multitudinous supernatural counterparts are incapable of matching. It teaches us that we are the products of 13.7 billion years of cosmic evolution and the mechanism by which meaning entered the universe, if only for a fleeting moment in time. Because the universe means something to me, and the fact that we are all agglomerations of quarks and electrons in a complex and fragile pattern that can perceive the beauty of the universe with visceral wonder, is, I think, a thought worth raising a glass to this Christmas.

Things inexorably get worse.

To me, and to the participants of at the Green Bank conference, the idea that a civilization might destroy itself is both ludicrous and likely. We are pathetically inadequate at long-term planning, idiotically primitive in our destructive urges and pathologically incapable of simply getting along.

You are exporting disorder [in the form of heat into the Universe] now as you read this book. You are hastening the demise of everything that exists, bringing forward by your very existence the arrival of time known as the heat death, when all stars have died, all black holes have evaporated away and the entirety of creation is a uniform bath of photons incapable of storing a single bit of information about the glorious adolescence of our wonderful Universe.