Multiverse Quotes

“Multiverse”

“multiverse”

“It is undeniable that today the verifiability of the multiverse appears extremely arduous.”

“Parallel universe (fiction)”

“The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.”

“Quinn Mallory: (To a government scientist) I've been sliding through an inter-dimensional wormhole seeing how many different ways people like you can screw up civilization!”

“Quinn Mallory: [season one monologue/opening] What if you could find brand new worlds right here on Earth? Where anything is possible. Same planet, different dimension. I've found the gateway.”

“Those who assumed innumerable worlds, e.g., Anaximander, Leukippos, Demokritos, and, later on, Epicurus, assumed that they came into being and passed away ad infinitum, some always coming into being and others passing away.”

“Quinn Mallory: What if you could travel to parallel worlds? The same year, the same Earth, only different dimensions. A world where the Russians rule America... or where your dreams of being superstar came true... or where San Francisco was a maximum-security prison. My friends and I found the gateway. Now the problem is... finding a way back home.”

“Anaximander gave up the idea that water or any other known substance might be the first principle, and held that this is of the nature of the infinite, that is, matter without any determinate property except that of being infinite. All things are developed out of this and return to it again, so that an infinite series of worlds have been generated and have in turn become again resolved into the abstract mass.”

“... I wouldn't say, per se, that I am comfortable with the multiverse. What I would say is that I think it's a tool that we have in our toolbox. And when we are confronted with problems that we cannot solve any other way, then there are times when we might use that tool to see if it offers insight that we can't get using any other approach.”

“A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past. Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once.”

“That what is outside is infinite, leads people to suppose that body also is infinite, and that there is an infinite number of worlds. Why should there be body in one part of the void rather than in another? Grant only that mass is anywhere and it follows that it must be everywhere. Also, if void and place are infinite, there must be infinite body too, for in the case of eternal things what may be must be.”

“Desperation has led to a "dangerous" idea: perhaps we live in an anthropically selected universe. According to this view, we live in a multiverse ...it is not scientifically verifiable. ...it leads inevitably to a depressing end to science. ...it is far too early to be so desperate. This is a dangerous idea that I am simply unwilling to contemplate.”

“Perhaps existence isn't something that gets bestowed from the outside, by having "fire breathed" into a potentiality by some unexplained fire-breathing agency (that is, a transcendent existence generator) but is ...something self-activating. I have suggested that only self-consistent loops capable of understanding themselves can create themselves, so that only universes with (at least the potential for) life and mind really exist.”

“The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has, in what we laughingly call the past, had a great deal to say on the subject of parallel universes. Very little of this is, however, at all comprehensible to anyone below the level of Advanced God, and since it is now well established that all known gods came into existence a good three-millionths of a second after the Universe began rather than, as they usually claimed, the previous week, they already have a great deal of explaining to do as it is and are therefore not available for comment on matters of deep physics at this time.”

“Once you take seriously that all possible universes can (or do) exist then a slippery slope opens up before you. It has long been recognised that technical civilisations, only a little more advanced than ourselves, will have the capability to simulate universes in which self-conscious entities can emerge and communicate with one another. ...if we live in a simulated reality we should expect occasional sudden glitches, small drifts in the supposed constants and laws of Nature over time, and a dawning realisation that the flaws of Nature are as important as the laws of Nature for our understanding of true reality.”

“As regards the objection that possibles are independent of the decrees of God I grant it of actual decrees (although the Cartesians do not at all agree to this), but I maintain that the possible individual concepts involve certain possible free decrees; for example, if this world was only possible, the individual concept of a particular body in this world would involve certain movements as possible, it would also involve the laws of motion, which are the free decrees of God; but these, also, only as possibilities. Because, as there are an infinity of possible worlds, there are also an infinity of laws, certain ones appropriate to one; others, to another, and each possible individual of any world involves in its concept the laws of its world.”

“The halls rose in a pyramid, becoming even more beautiful as one mounted towards the apex, and representing more beautiful worlds. Finally they reached the highest one which completed the pyramid, and which was the most beautiful of all: for the pyramid had a beginning, but one could not see its end; it had an apex, but no base; it went on increasing to infinity. ...because amongst an endless number of possible worlds there is the best of all, else would God not have determined to create any; but there is not any one which has not also less perfect worlds below it: that is why the pyramid goes on descending to infinity. ...We are in the real true world (said the Goddess) and you are at the source of happiness.”

“And again, who will be frightened by the objections of the stoics, when they ask how will a single Fate and a single Providence stand, or how will there not be several Jupiters and several Joves, if there be a plurality of worlds? In the first place, then, if the notion of there being several Jupiters and Joves be absurd, surely those ideas of their own are much more absurd: for suns, and moons, and Apollos, and Dianas, and Neptunes they suppose in infinite numbers in their infinite revolutions of worlds. Secondly, what absolute necessity is there for there being several Jupiters, if there be a ‘plurality of worlds; and not one Ruler and Director of the Whole to each—a God possessing Reason and Intelligence, in the same way as He that is with us, entitled Lord and Father of all?’”