Lee Smolin

There is no time apart from change. There is no such thing as a clock outside the network of changing relationships. ...one can only compare how fast one thing is happening with the rate of some other process.

Having begun my life in science searching for the equation beyond time, I now believe that the deepest secret of the universe is that its essence rests in how it unfolds moment by moment in time.

I believe that the main lesson of relativity and quantum theory is that the world is nothing but an evolving network of relationships.

From the beginning of physics, there have been those who imagined they would be the last generation to face the unknown. Physics has always seemed to its practitioners to be almost complete. This complacency is shattered only during revolutions, when honest people are forced to admit that they don't know the basics.

Quantum theory can be described as a new kind of language to be used in a dialogue between us and the systems we study with our instruments. ...It tells us nothing about what the world would be like in our absence.

We seem to have an ingrained idea that if something is valuable, it exists outside of time.

To be human is to be suspended between danger and opportunity. ...The challenge of life is to choose wisely, from the enormous number of possible dangers, what's worth worrying about. It is also about choosing, from all the opportunities... always in the face of incomplete knowledge of the consequences.