Roger Penrose
1931– · English mathematical physicist, recreational mathematician and philosopher
[C]razy ideas are the sort of thing one needs when talking about the Big Bang. ...All the ideas I'm going to show you... are put forward by very... respectable cosmologists. It doesn't make the ideas any less crazy...
— Roger PenroseGeneral relativity is certainly a very beautiful theory, but how does one judge the elegance of physical theories generally?
— Roger PenroseIt seems to me that we must make a distinction between what is "objective" and what is "measurable" in discussing the question of physical reality, according to quantum mechanics.
— Roger PenroseChildren are not afraid to pose basic questions that may embarrass us, as adults, to ask.
— Roger PenroseDo not seek for reasons in the specific patterns of stars, or of other scattered arrangements of objects; look, instead, for a deeper universal order in the way that things behave.
— Roger PenroseUnderstanding is, after all, what science is all about — and science is a great deal more than mindless computation.
— Roger PenroseWhat the anthropic principle depends upon is the idea that whatever is the nature of the universe, or universe portion that we see about us, being subject to whatever dynamical laws govern its actions, this must be strongly favourable to our very existence.
— Roger PenroseIt 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