Michio Kaku Quotes

“Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life.

First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability.

Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.”

“Einstein once wrote that he believed in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists, not in a God who is concerned with the fate and actions of men.”

“However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability.”

“In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and the stars is the distortion of space and time.”

“It would take a civilization far more advanced than ours, unbelievably advanced, to begin to manipulate negative energy to create gateways to the past. But if you could obtain large quantities of negative energy — and that's a big 'if' — then you could create a time machine that apparently obeys Einstein's equation and perhaps the laws of quantum theory.”

“Science, however, is never conducted as a popularity contest, but instead advances through testable, reproducible, and falsifiable theories.”

“We should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.”

“As Heinz Pagels has said, the challenge to our civilization which has come from our knowledge of the cosmic energies that fuels the stars, the movement of light and electrons through matter, the intricate molecular order which is the biological basis of life, must be met by the creation of a moral and political order which will accommodate these forces or we shall be destroyed. It will try our deepest resources of reason and compassion.”

“It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.”

“Just one supernova can temporarily outshine an entire galaxy of 100 billion stars.”

“Some people seek meaning in life through personal gain, through personal relationship, or through personal experiences. However, it seems to me that being blessed with the intellect to divine the ultimate secrets of nature gives meaning enough to life.”

“Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33... Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years’ worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.”

“Isaac Newton himself, who introduced the concept of immutable laws which guided the planets and stars without divine intervention, believed that the elegance of these laws pointed to the existence of God.”

“Our Sun is not Earth’s true 'mother'. Although many peoples of Earth have worshipped the Sun as a god that gave birth to Earth, this is only partially correct. Although Earth was originally created from the Sun (as part of the ecliptic plane of debris and dust that circulated around the Sun 4.5 billion years ago), our Sun is barely hot enough to fuse hydrogen to helium.

This means that our true 'mother' sun was actually an unnamed star or collection of stars that died billions of years ago in a supernova, which then seeded nearby nebulae with the higher elements beyond iron that make up our body. Literally, our bodies are made of stardust, from stars that died billions of years ago.”

“Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.”

“The laws of physics, carefully constructed after thousands of years of experimentation, are nothing but the laws of harmony one can write down for strings and membranes. The laws of chemistry are the melodies that one can play on these strings. the universe is a symphony of strings. And the 'Mind of God', which Einstein wrote eloquently about, is cosmic music resonating throughout hyperspace.”

“By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory.”

“The real bottleneck is software. Creating software can be done only the old-fashioned way. A human – sitting quietly in a chair with a pencil, paper and laptop – is going to have to write the codes. One can mass-produce hardware and increase it's power by piling on more and more chips, but you cannot mass-produce the brain.”

“There are two competing trends in the world today: one is to create a planetary civilization that is tolerant, scientific, and prosperous, but the other glorifies anarchy and ignorance that could rip the fabric of our society.”

“There is so much noise on the Internet, with would-be prophets daily haranguing their audience and megalomaniacs trying to push bizarre ideas, that eventually people will cherish a new commodity: wisdom.”

“To understand the difficulty of predicting the next 100 years, we have to appreciate the difficulty that the people of 1900 had in predicting the world of 2000.”

“Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3-D situations, use more computer power than mainframe computers of the previous decade. The Sony PlayStation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.”

“A plasma is the 'fourth state of matter'. Solids, liquids, and gases make up the three familiar states of matter, but the most common form of matter in the universe is plasma, a gas of ionized atoms.”

“As Sir William Osler once said: The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.”

“Because of Faraday's extreme poverty in his youth, he was illiterate in mathematics, and as a result, his notebooks were not full of mathematical equations, but only drawn forms of lines of force, which is one of the most important concepts in the whole of science. Ironically, his lack of mathematical learning led him to make those shapes that are now at the heart of physics.”

“One day, would it be possible to walk through walls? To build starships that can travel faster than the speed of life? To read other people's mind? To become invisible? To move objects with the power of our minds? To transport our bodies instantly through outer space? Since I was a child, I've always been fascinated by these questions.”

“Scientists from Cornell University made the smallest guitar in the world, which is 20 times smaller than a human hair and made of silicon crystal. This guitar has six strings, each 100 atoms thick, and can be played by moving the strings through an atomic force microscope. This guitar really plays music, but at frequencies much higher than the level of the human ear.”

“The Pentagon has been looking into the possibility of developing 'smart dust', dust-sized particles that have tiny sensors inside that can be sprayed over a battlefield to give commanders real-time information. In the future it is conceivable that 'smart dust' might be sent to the nearby stars.”

“Although consciousness is a patchwork of competing and often contradictory tendencies, the left brain ignores inconsistencies and papers over obvious gaps in order to give us a smooth sense of a single 'I'. In other words, the left brain is constantly making excuses, some of them harebrained and preposterous, to make sense of the world. It is constantly asking 'Why?' and dreaming up excuses even if the question has no answer.”

“Brain scans done by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis indicate that areas used to recall memories are the same as those involved in simulating the future. In particular, the link between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus lights up when a person is engaged in planning for the future and remembering the past.”