"Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks . A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin’s theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. We’ve repeatedly tested this prediction, and the results overwhelmingly support Darwin. At high speeds, Einstein realized that time slows down, and curmudgeons on the Swedish Nobel committee found this so weird that they refused to give him the Nobel Prize for his relativity theory. At low temperatures, can flow upward. At high temperatures, colliding particles change identity; to me, an electron colliding with a and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship. On microscopic scales, particles schizophrenically appear in two places at once, leading to the quantum conundrums... On astronomically large scales... weirdness strikes again: if you intuitively understand all aspects of black holes... put down this book and publish your findings before someone scoops you on the Nobel Prize for quantum gravity… the leading theory for what happened suggests that space isn’t merely really really big, but actually infinite, containing infinitely many exact copies of you, and even more near-copies living out every possible variant of your life in two different types of parallel universes."

“So with each advance in understanding come new questions. So we need to be very humble. We shouldn't have hubris and think that we can understand everything. But history tells us that there is good reason to believe that we will continue making fantastic progress in the years ahead.”

“hat I had been missing... and what Feynman realized: physics is the ultimate intellectual adventure, the quest to understand the deepest mysteries of our Universe. ...t makes us see more clearly, adding to the beauty and wonder of the world ...he lens of physics adds more beauty to the world ...”

“It depends... on what you measure outrageousness in... If what you mean is that something is more extravagant if it... involves somehow having more particles, or reality being bigger... then sure. But... maybe the kind of simplicity that we should value with Occam's razor is rather that the math is simple. The equations are simple.”

“I... ended up at the, focusing on environmental issues. I wanted to... make our planet a better place, and felt that the main problem... that we didn't properly use... technology... I... was intrigued by... creating economic incentives that aligned... egoism with the common good. ...I soon grew disillusioned, concluding that economics was... intellectual prostitution... rewarded for saying what the powers that be wanted to hear. ...he book that changed everything: ...hat did Feynman see that I missed in high school? ...I sat down with... ... and started reading, "If... all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed... " ...I read on ...I felt like I was having a religious experience I finally got it!”

“Eratosthenes... knew that the Sun was straight overhead in... Syene at noon on the summer solstice, but that it was 7.2 degrees south of straight overhead in, located 794 kilometers farther north. He concluded... 794 kilometers corresponded to 7.2 degrees out of the 360 degrees... around Earth's circumference, so that the circumference must be... 39,700 km...”

“If I get a parking ticket, there is always a parallel universe where I didn't. On the other hand, there is yet another universe where my car was stolen.”