Quotes from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Robert Frost wrote in 1914, “Why abandon a belief / Merely because it ceases to be true.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Paleolithic humans migrated often, and, like my teenagers, they followed the food.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“I wouldn’t have to drop out of academia and take a more lucrative position waiting tables at the faculty club.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Well, I have been working on my own theory for twelve years,” and then he proceeded to describe it in excruciating detail. When he was finished, Feynman turned to me and said, in front of the man who had just proudly described his work, “That’s exactly what I mean about wasting your time.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Chemicals were easier to procure than friends, and when I wanted to play with them they never said they had to stay home to wash their hair or, less politely, that they didn’t associate with weirdos.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“A pygmy upon a gyants shoulder may see farther than the [giant] himself.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Our species had to engage in complex cooperative behavior in order to survive in the wild, and—as I keep reminding my teenage children—pointing and grunting get you only so far.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“German authorities saw the need for a statute explicitly forbidding anyone associated with the university from drenching freshmen with urine,”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Leipzig that the university had to pass a rule against throwing stones at professors.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“a thousand years without a bath.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“if a lecture was not interesting or proceeded too slowly or too quickly, they would jeer and become rowdy.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“the invention of mummification. This was believed to be the key to a happy afterlife; certainly there were no disgruntled customers coming back to say otherwise.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“paleontological evidence suggests that the early farmers had more spinal issues, worse teeth, and more anemia and vitamin deficiencies—and died younger—than the populations of human foragers who preceded them.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“research on hunter-gatherer groups ranging from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries shows that the average nomad worked just two to four hours each day.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“discovering that hunter-gatherers had constructed Göbekli Tepe was like finding that someone had built a 747 in a basement with an X-Acto knife.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Upon learning of the young man’s interest in a physics book, Lindemann, a number theorist, abruptly ended the interview, saying, “In that case you are completely lost to mathematics.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Stephen Hawking once told me that there was a sense in which he was glad to be paralyzed, because it allowed him to focus much more intensely on his work.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Newton was “not finally reducible to the criteria by which we comprehend our fellow human beings.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One. I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“They required three thousand Jews, the man said, and the line had apparently held 3,004.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“the destination was the local cemetery, where everyone was ordered to dig a mass grave and then was shot dead and buried in it.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“My father had drawn number 3,004 in a death lottery in which German precision trumped Nazi brutality.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Pauli turned to the audience and argued, “Yes, my theory is crazy enough!” Then Bohr insisted, “No, your theory is not crazy enough!”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Heisenberg, who was attempting to hold German physics together, resented Schrödinger’s departure, “since he was neither Jewish nor otherwise endangered.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

“Einstein, who was then a professor in Berlin, was by chance visiting Caltech in the United States the day Hitler was appointed.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, quote from The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos

About the author

Popular quotes

“They wouldn’t have broken me. I’m not breakable, I may be shaken right now, but I’m not broken.”
― Erica Stevens, quote from Salvation

“-Kerwick, tú y yo jamás podremos regresar adonde estábamos antes que vinieran los normandos. Entre nosotros se ha cerrado una puerta. Olvida que fui una vez tu prometida.
-Ninguna puerta hay entre nosotros, Aislinn —dijo él con amargura-. Sólo un hombre." El bobo y la paloma.”
― Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, quote from The Wolf and the Dove

“Cathy, you burn like a candle in the dark." Victor titled up my face with his fingers. "All your life, people are going to see that, even from far away, even in the middle of the night, and they are going to come to you." He touched my damp cheek, still wet with tears. I could feel my skin flushing against his fingers, "They are going to want to add your light to theirs," he said "And every night ends, and then it's morning, and the sun comes up.”
― quote from Cathy's Book

“Felix shrugged. “To me, girls are meant to be pretty companions, not rebel comrades. They’re good for washing our clothes and preparing meals after a long day.” He flashed Jonas a grin. “And, of course, they’re excellent for warming beds.” Jonas eyed him with an edge of amusement. “You might want to keep that opinion to yourself when you meet Lysandra.” “She’s not pretty?” “Oh, she is. Extremely pretty, in fact. But she’ll hand your arse to you on a rusty platter if you ever ask her to cook your meals or wash your clothes. And especially if you invite her to warm your bed.” “If she’s as pretty as you say I might try to change her mind.” Jonas’s grin widened. “Good luck with that. I’ll be sure to bring flowers to your grave.” Felix”
― Morgan Rhodes, quote from Gathering Darkness

“L'idea che qualunque cosa facesse si dovesse trasformare in un evento irrimediabile, gli dava un senso disperato di frustrazione.”
― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Assistant

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.