Roger Penrose Quotes

#1. So what I'm saying is why don't we think about changing Schrodinger's equation at some level when masses become too big at the level that you might have to worry about Einstein's general relativity.

Roger Penrose

#2. As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness.

Roger Penrose

#3. This book is about physics and its about physics and its relationship with mathematics and how they seem to be intimately related and to what extent can you explore this relationship and trust it.

Roger Penrose

#4. In the book, I make the point that here we have string theory and here we have twistor theory and we don't know if either one of them is the right approach to nature.

Roger Penrose

#5. Well, I don't know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I'm no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much.

Roger Penrose

#6. Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense.

Roger Penrose

#7. Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.

Roger Penrose

#8. Our present picture of physical reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due for a grand shake up

Roger Penrose

#9. Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.

Roger Penrose

#10. The idea is if you use those two shapes and try to colour the plane with them so the colours match, then the only way that you can do this is to produce a pattern which never repeats itself.

Roger Penrose

#11. There are considerable mysteries surrounding the strange values that Nature's actual particles have for their mass and charge. For example, there is the unexplained 'fine structure constant' ... governing the strength of electromagnetic interactions, ...

Roger Penrose

#12. My own way of thinking is to ponder long and I hope deeply on problems and for a long time which I keep away for years and years and I never really let them go.

Roger Penrose

#13. Well I didn't actually see the Matrix but I've seen other movies where with similar sorts of themes.

Roger Penrose

#14. Understanding is, after all, what science is all about - and science is a great deal more than mindless computation.

Roger Penrose

#15. With thought comprising a non-computational element, computers can never do what we human beings can.

Roger Penrose

#16. There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there by chance.

Roger Penrose

#17. We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.

Roger Penrose

#18. It is always the case, with mathematics, that a little direct experience of thinking over things on your own can provide a much deeper understanding than merely reading about them.

Roger Penrose

#19. As you say, the way string theory requires all these extra dimensions and this comes from certain consistency requirements about how string should behave and so on.

Roger Penrose

#20. But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality.

Roger Penrose

#21. Ordinary photons do have spin, they have a notion of helicity so they spin around their direction on motion.

Roger Penrose

#22. Well, gauge theory is very fundamental to our understanding of physical forces these days. But they are also dependent on a mathematical idea, which has been around for longer than gauge theory has.

Roger Penrose

#23. I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance.

Roger Penrose

#24. It is hard to see how one could begin to develop a quantum-theoretical description of brain action when one might well have to regard the brain as "observing itself" all the time!

Roger Penrose

#25. If you didn't have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn't be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

Roger Penrose

#26. Some people take the view that we happen by accident. I think that there is something much deeper, of which we have very little inkling at the moment.

Roger Penrose

#27. I was indeed very slow as a youngster.

Roger Penrose

#28. The basic theory in twistor theory is not to add extra dimensions.

Roger Penrose

#29. People think of these eureka moments and my feeling is that they tend to be little things, a little realisation and then a little realisation built on that.

Roger Penrose

#30. I'm pretty tenacious when it comes to problems.

Roger Penrose

#31. Even an aardvarks think their offspring are beautiful

Roger Penrose

#32. Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.

Roger Penrose

#33. It may well be there is something else going on in the brain that we don't have an inkling of at the moment.

Roger Penrose

#34. Intelligence cannot be present without understanding. No computer has any awareness of what it does.

Roger Penrose

#35. And these little things may not seem like much but after a while they take you off on a direction where you may be a long way off from what other people have been thinking about.

Roger Penrose

#36. Do not be afraid to skip equations (I do this frequently myself).

Roger Penrose

#37. Ambition, idly vain; revenge and malice swell her train.

Roger Penrose