Brian Cox Quotes

#1. There's so much light in Broughty Ferry. I think the humour in Glasgow is darker, because it's much more gloomy, there's a perpetual misery there.

Brian Cox

#2. Science is different to all other systems of thought because you dont need faith in it, you can check that it works.

Brian Cox

#3. I didn't have this feeling that I should be a leading actor in the cinema. And I wouldn't want the responsibility of the opening weekend.

Brian Cox

#4. United States spends more on pet grooming than it does on fusion research.

Brian Cox

#5. My mother Molly had a nervous breakdown after my father Chic died, aged 50. He was a very generous man who ran a shop in Dundee giving a lot of people tick. When he died, a lot of people hadn't paid their bills, so he died with a lot of debt. After he died, my mother went doolally.

Brian Cox

#6. 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.

Brian Cox

#7. I always think I look like the Elephant Man - I can't get used to my own image.

Brian Cox

#8. You have to get old because of the geometry of spacetime.

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

#10. As a boy, I was never interested in theater because I came from a working-class Scottish home. I thought, 'I want to do movies.' Then it was finding the means to do it.

Brian Cox

#11. 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!

Brian Cox

#12. We're both clever and stupid in equal measure.

Brian Cox

#13. Science is most definitely not a priesthood where people stand on a mountain and pass truths down to the waiting minions below.

Brian Cox

#14. 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.

Brian Cox

#15. An explorer of the universe is sexier than a musician.

Brian Cox

#16. People always make that mistake when they talk about theatre - the notion of the 'theatrical' meaning something separate from life. If it doesn't relate to life, it doesn't relate to anything.

Brian Cox

#17. The problem is that the U.K. in essence is a feudal society. It's everyone in their place.

Brian Cox

#18. most southerly rising point occurs at

Brian Cox

#19. Actors in general have become very spoiled in the roles they choose these days. When I first started in this profession - about a hundred years ago in the last century - it was all about taking risks, it was about doing the job and honing the craft.

Brian Cox

#20. The trouble with New York today is that it's lost its balance. I love the new, greener New York, but it takes all kinds of worlds to make a World.

Brian Cox

#21. 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.

Brian Cox

#22. For me, it's just acting. It's pretending. The best actors are children, and children don't do research. You never see a child going, 'I'm wondering about my motivation here. How can I do this toy? How can I do this train? I don't feel train.'

Brian Cox

#23. We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself.

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

#25. Every one of us is related to someone who lived in Ethiopia hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is the Garden of Eden,

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

#27. When we look out into space, we are looking into our own origins, because we are truly children of the stars.

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

#30. As we get older, things seem less important.

Brian Cox

#31. 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.

Brian Cox

#32. So if we assume we are not the only civilisation in the galaxy, then at least a few others must have arisen billions of years ahead of us. But where are they?

Brian Cox

#33. Unlike New Zealand, which has nothing especially predatory, Australia is full of spiders and crocodiles and all kinds of animals that will eat you and sting you.

Brian Cox

#34. 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.

Brian Cox

#35. 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.

Brian Cox

#36. The heritage of a British actor revolves around the challenges of playing the classic roles to meet certain levels of success as an actor. In America, the heritage of an actor is based on cinema mainly.

Brian Cox

#37. Ah, there's a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who's, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he's a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art.

Brian Cox

#38. I'm 100% Celt. In fact, I'm directly related to the progenitor of the high kings of Ireland, Niall of the Nine Hostages.

Brian Cox

#39. I did a film in which Andy Garcia and Michael Keaton both played the leads, 'Desperate Measures,' and interestingly enough it was their biggest payday. The film didn't do well, and it kind of marked their careers. They've done less since. It all changed.

Brian Cox

#40. I used to do a lot of fencing in the theater and a lot of horse riding in the early days, so I'm used to it in a way. If you're classically trained like I am, it's a little bit like mother's milk to me. I enjoy it.

Brian Cox

#41. Even the Australians don't know how beautiful their own country is. Particularly where we were shooting 'The Straits.' Most of my stuff was done on an aboriginal settlement on the south shore, opposite Cairns, which I believe was the site where the last person was eaten in Australia.

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

#44. Deeper understanding confers that most precious thing - wonder.

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

#46. The ultimate paradox, of course, is that even though we're all going to die, we've all got to live in the meantime ...

Brian Cox

#47. I think I must be the only British actor who's played both Stalin and Trotsky. I need to play Lenin so I can make it a triptych.

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

#49. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

Brian Cox

#50. 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.

Brian Cox

#51. There is a history of mental breakdowns in my family. It will never happen to me but it has happened to others in the family.

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

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

Brian Cox

#54. I've directed a couple of times in the theater, but I wouldn't make a habit of it because it's too consuming.

Brian Cox

#55. I enjoy acting now more than I ever have. I've had lots of difficult times when I was younger, but that was all tied up with thwarted ambition. It's hard being a young actor, because you don't realise until later that it's only ever about doing the work.

Brian Cox

#56. I come from a working class community in eastern Scotland, and I've always been a populist, though not a patronising populist.

Brian Cox

#57. I've always wanted to make a film.

Brian Cox