Lee Smolin Quotations

If string theory is a mistake, it's not a trivial mistake. It's a deep mistake and therefore kind of worthy.

We know that the expansion of our universe is accelerating, which means a number called the cosmological constant must be positive.

Every string theory that's been written down says the speed of light is universal. But other ideas about quantum gravity predict the speed of light has actually increased.

There certainly is a tension between the relativity of simultaneity and non-locality in quantum theory, but it's not strong enough to add up to a falsification of either side by itself.

Science moves fastest when there's plenty of debate and controversy.

How we think about the future and the past determines everything about how we think about our situation as human beings.

When we human beings hypothesize that a law of nature holds - even temporarily or situationally - we are creating an idea, but we are also making a hypothesis about how nature behaves, whose truth or usefulness has nothing to do with what we know or believe.

General relativity predicts that time ends inside black holes because the gravitational collapse squeezes matter to infinite density.

One possibility is: God is nothing but the power of the universe to organize itself.

Some string theorists prefer to believe that string theory is too arcane to be understood by human beings, rather than consider the possibility that it might just be wrong.