Quotes & Sayings About Order In The Universe

All things created have an order in themselves, and this begets the form that lets the universe resemble God. — Dante Alighieri

Yet none of these things [laws, justice, human rights, money] exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. People easily understand that 'primitives' cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire. What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis. Take for example the world of business corporations. Modern business-people and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger stories. — Yuval Noah Harari

Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with. — Paulo Coelho

Faith is indeed the energy of our whole universe directed to the highest form of being. Faith gives stability to our view of the universe. By faith we are convinced that our impressions of things without are not dreams or delusions, but, for us, true representations of our environment. By faith we are convinced that the signs of permanence, order, progress, which we observe in nature are true. By faith we are convinced that fellowship is possible with our fellow man and with God. — Brooke Westcott

But innovation is more than a new method. It is a new view of the universe, as one of risk rather than of chance or of certainty. It is a new view of man's role in the universe; he creates order by taking risks. And this means that innovation, rather than being an assertion of human power, is an acceptance of human responsibility. — Peter Drucker

Pure creativity is magnificent expressly because it is the opposite of everything else in life that's essential or inescapable (food, shelter, medicine, rule of law, social order, community and familial responsibility, sickness, loss, death, taxes, etc.). Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it's a gift. It's the frosting. Our creativity is a wild and unexpected bonus from the universe. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A dictionary is merely the universe arranged in alphabetical order. — Anatole France

When we look within ourselves with psilocybin, we discover that we do not have to look outward toward the futile promise of life that circles distant stars in order to still our cosmic loneliness. We should look within; the paths of the heart lead to nearby universes full of life and affection for humanity. — Terence McKenna

Sometimes you have to let go in order to receive; after all the universe naturally acquires balance. — Turcois Ominek

We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, 'Oh, hi, Ed! Nice tan. How's Carol?' involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble. — Douglas Adams

The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Perhaps everything was connected to everything, in a discernible if nebulous way, and if one might only trace the fibers and filaments of those connections, one might ... One might what? Observe the Grand Design? Untangle all the puppet strings and discover whose hands (or claws) are pulling them? End the ancient search for order and meaning in the universe? — Tom Robbins

I believe in the supreme excellence of righteousness; I believe that the law of righteousness will triumph in the universe over all evil; I believe that in the attempt to fulfil the law of righteousness, however imperfect it must remain, are to be found the inspiration, the consolation, and the sanctification of human existence. We live in order to finish an, as yet, unfinished universe, unfinished so far as the human, that is, the highest part of it, is concerned. We live in order to develop the superior qualities of man which are, as yet, for the most part latent. — Felix Adler

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little - "
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point - "
MY POINT EXACTLY. — Terry Pratchett

This puzzling discrepancy prompted the development of the controversial cosmological theory known as the Strong Misanthropic Principle, which asserts that the universe exists in order to screw with us. — Robert Kroese

You stole it from the master."
"Who stole it from me. What I did simply set the universe back in order. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

On the one hand, there are people known as straight, regular, square (and there are also cubes and tesseracts), classified, degreed, graduated, and moneyed, who live in little boxes made of ticky-tacky, cultivate lawn order, and want to get things ironed out in nothing flat. On the other, there are bohemians, nuts, bums, freaks, eccentrics, beatifics, whollymen, courtesans, vagrants, and hippies (a name which ought to have something to do with the dangerous curves of women's hips), who want to experience the universe in a groovy, swinging, ecstatic, syncopated, rock-and-rolling, mind-blown, turned-on, and far-out way. — Alan W. Watts

Zhou," Biyu said, when Sabaa paused, "before the Jade Emperor, humans were just like the beasts in the field. We ate, lived and reproduced, but we were going nowhere. The universe is order in all its perfection, stagnant and unchanging. The wars set us free. Free to change, to learn, to adapt, to become more than we were. To do that, we sacrificed order for a measure of chaos, of challenge. It let some people, men and women, do evil, but even that inspired many more to do good. Medicines, writing, music, architecture, all the accomplishments of your Empire came at a high price, but it was worth paying. Tonight we reaffirm that fact. Without the power we grant the Jade Emperor from the realms we represent, we would lose all that we have gained. The universe would reassert its control. Over the years, order would take charge once more and progress would end. Given time, our race would slide back into the beasts we were once. It is something we could not survive. — G.R. Matthews

It is a great and beautiful spectacle to see a man somehow emerging from oblivion by his own efforts, dispelling with the light of his reason the shadows in which nature had enveloped him, rising above himself, soaring in his mind right up to the celestial regions, moving, like the sun, with giant strides through the vast extent of the universe, and, what is even greater and more difficult, returning to himself in order to study man there and learn of his nature, his obligations, and his end. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In order to find reality, each must search for his own universe, look for the details that contribute to this reality7 that one feels under the surface of things. To be an artist means to search, to find and look at these realities. To be an artist means never to look away. — Akira Kurosawa

Every being has its own interior, its self, its mystery, its numinous aspect. To deprive any being of this sacred quality is to disrupt the total order of the universe. Reverence will be total or it will not be at all. The universe does not come to us in pieces any more than a human individual stands before us with some part of his/her being. — Thomas Berry

If we could sufficiently understand the order of the universe, we should find that it exceeds all the desires of the wisest men, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is, not only as a whole and in general but also for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as we ought to be, to the Author of all, not only as to the architect and efficient cause of our being, but as to our master and to the final cause, which ought to be the whole aim of our will, and which can alone make our happiness. — Gottfried Leibniz

A man-made thing that produces pleasure (and criticism) by somehow taping into the order of the universe is beautiful. Making beautiful things makes our lives worthwhile. My teacher, and one of the founders of the Pratt industrial design program, Rowena Reed Kostellow, said, "Pure, unadulterated beauty should be the goal of civilization." From a pragmatic point of view, for something to be beautiful, it has to work. In order to make this idea clearer I have combined the ideas of beauty and function into one word: Beautility. — Tucker Viemeister

Self-realization or self-knowing or awakening is about knowing/ becoming conscious of our true nature and living in harmony with the universe in an ever ascending order. — Thomas Vazhakunnathu

At the heart of his paper was the notion that fairy tales relieved us of our need for order and allowed us impossible, irrational desires. Magic was real, that was his thesis. This thesis was at the very center of chaos theory - if the tiniest of actions reverberated throughout the universe in invisible and unexpected ways, changing the weather and the climate, then anything was possible. The girl who sleeps for a hundred years does so because of a single choice to thread a needle. The golden ball that falls down the well rattles the world, changing everything. The bird that drops a feather, the butterfly that moves its wings, all of it drifts across the universe, through the woods, to the other side of the mountain. The dust you breathe in was once breathed out. The person you are, the weather around you, all of it a spell you can't understand or explain. — Alice Hoffman

Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: "The king is dead, long live the king", in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant. — Maximilien Robespierre

For architecture, among all the arts, is the one that most boldly tries to reproduce in its rhythm the order of the universe, which the ancients called "kosmos," that is to say ornate, since it is like a great animal on whom there shine the perfection and the proportion of all its members. And praised be our Creator who, as the Scriptures say, has decreed all things in number, weight, and measure. — Umberto Eco

Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered. — G.K. Chesterton

Well, we think that time 'passes,' flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see. The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers. — Ursula K. Le Guin

What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?" Alyosha was rather astonished. "Oh, God and all the rest of it." "What, don't you believe in God?" "Oh, I've nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but... I admit that He is needed... for the order of the universe and all that... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented," added — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

God has not forgotten you. He will as readily order about the forces of the universe on your account as He did on Noah's. His plans for Noah were also plans for the whole world through Noah. So they are for you. He will use you for the good of the whole world if you will let Him. SELECTED We may forget; God does not! God's time is never wrong, Never too fast nor too slow; The planets move to its steady pace As the centuries come and go. Stars rise and set by that time, The punctual comets come back With never a second's variance, From the round of their viewless track. Men space their years by the sun, And reckon their months by the moon, Which never arrive too late And never depart too soon. Let us set our clocks by God's, And order our lives by His ways, And nothing can come and nothing can go Too soon or too late in our day. ANNIE JOHNSON FLINT "There are no dates in His fine leisure. — Lettie B. Cowman

In the index to the six hundred odd pages of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History, abridged version, the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Newton do not occur yet their cosmic quest destroyed the medieval vision of an immutable social order in a walled-in universe and transformed the European landscape, society, culture, habits and general outlook, as thoroughly as if a new species had arisen on this planet. — Arthur Koestler

The wolf eats the lamb; the strong eats the weak. This is not God's Order, because it lacks justice, ethics and goodness. This chaotic structure belongs to the evolution! Evolution is primitive and it lacks high intelligence; it moves ahead by crawling and it is faulty! He who calls this system as God's Order openly insults God! We must know that God is not in this universe; He is somewhere else, somewhere where there is no evolution, where there is justice, ethics and goodness! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods. — Stephen Jay Gould

Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth of meaning and lack of discernible purpose. And yet, with bewildering optimism, we continue to assemble whatever scraps of information we can gather in scrolls and books and computer chips, on shelf after library shelf, whether material, virtual or otherwise, pathetically intent on lending the world a semblance of sense and order, while knowing perfectly well that, however much we'd like to believe the contrary, our pursuits are sadly doomed to failure. — Alberto Manguel

The human being is only a reed, the most feeble in nature; but this is a thinking reed. It isn't necessary for the entire universe to arm itself in order to crush him; a whiff of vapor, a taste of water, suffices to kill him. But when the universe crushes him, the human being becomes still more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and the advantage that the universe has over him. The universe, it does not have a clue.
All our dignity consists, then, in thought. This is the basis on which we must raise ourselves, and not space and time, which we would not know how to fill. Let us make it our task, then, to think well: here is the principle of morality. — Blaise Pascal

The absurdist is concerned with the search for meaning in the Universe. He believes this search to be meaningless
hence the disintegration of plot, character, and language in absurdist drama. Order is a falsehood that we, God, those who came before us, have imposed on a random universe. However, the absurdist is confronted with a curious paradox: though he believes the Universe to be meaningless, he cannot abandon the search for meaning
or he will die. — Walter Wykes

An idea was needed, a great idea, a grand vision, to grasp the hidden order of the world. Leucippus and Democritus came up with this idea. The idea of Democritus's system is extremely simple: the entire universe is made up of a boundless space in which innumerable atoms run. Space is without limits; has neither an above nor a below; is without a center or a boundary. Atoms have no qualities at all, apart from their shape. They — Carlo Rovelli

In the digital universe, our personal history and its sense of narrative is succeeded by our social networking profile - a snapshot of the current moment. The information itself - our social graph of friends and likes - is a product being sold to market researchers in order to better predict and guide our futures. — Douglas Rushkoff

There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal communications which I really hear there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole. So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling one's self in touch with what is universally true. — Carl Rogers

The range of the human mind, the scale and depth of the metaphors the mind is capable of manufacturing as it grapples with the universe, stand in stunning contrast to the belief that there is only one reality, which is man's, or worse, that only one culture among the many on earth possesses the truth.
To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself, "There could be more, there could be things we don't understand," is not to damn knowledge. It is to take a wider view. It is to permit yourself an extraordinary freedom: someone else does not have to be wrong in order that you may be right. — Barry Lopez

Hang on for some metaphysics. The Aneristic Principle is that of order, the Eristic Principle is that of disorder. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the aneristic illusion. Actually, what order is "there" is imposed on primal chaos in the same sense that a person's name is draped over his actual self. It is the job of the scientist, for example, to implement this principle in a practical manner and some are quite brilliant at it. But on closer examination, order disolves into disorder, which is the ERISTIC ILLUSION. - Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C., Principia Discordia — Robert Shea

The universe is completely balanced and in perfect order. You will always be compensated for everything that you do. — Brian Tracy

I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.
God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind.
But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head.
I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will.
The last cowboy,
Robert — Robert James Waller

All things are linked with one another, and this oneness is sacred; there is nothing that is not interconnected with everything else. For things are interdependent, and they combine to form this universal order. There is only one universe made up of all things, and one creator who pervades them; there is one substance and one law, namely, common reason in all thinking creatures, and all truth is one-if, as we believe, there is only one path of perfection for all beings who share the same mind. — Marcus Aurelius

Dear universe... I am ready and OPEN to receive ALL the blessings of joy, abundance, and prosperity you have in store for me today!!! Right NOW - I AM present - and opening the gift of this PRESENT moment! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!! I AM SO HAPPY AND THANKFUL to be alive in a world that provides a full buffet of exciting choices! I feel overjoyed knowing I have the POWER to sort through my inner thoughts and outer experiences and CHOOSE the things that I want in order to create "my perfect world" around me!!! I AM - THE CREATOR OF MY OWN REALITY!!! — Adi Atar

There is order in the universe, even though it looks like chaos. We separate the world into categories: this is good and this is bad. But life is set up to trick us. It's a series of illusions we invest in. And ultimately those investments don't serve our understanding, because physicality is always going to let you down, because physicality doesn't last. — Madonna Ciccone

The crucial discovery was made that, in order to become painting, the universe seen by the artist had to become a private one created by himself. — Andre Malraux

She's kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she's turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.
My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father. And to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world. — Nicole Krauss

Sometimes all we have to do is make the simple choice to stop being angry or fearful in order to discover the infinite wonders of the Universe that await us behind a door we shut long ago. — Molly Friedenfeld

The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that sunlight was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings on the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact. — Haruki Murakami

If form follows function, as we know it does in this Universe, then consciousness will adapt to whatever form it requires in order to function. Hopefully, it will also develop its fundamental function; what that is may be debatable within many schools of thought, but it is indisputable that evolved thinking recognizes the universality of Life. — Vanna Bonta

Doing work which has to be done over and over again helps us recognize the natural cycles of growth and decay, of birth and death, and thus become aware of the dynamic order of the universe. "Ordinary" work, as the root meaning of the term indicates, is work that is in harmony with the order we perceive in the natural environment. — Fritjof Capra

The existence of God is not logically necessary, and yet, on the basis of some profound peculiar empirical order in the universe, it seems that He exists as the ultimate uncreated Being, implying a paradox, as no logically unnecessary entity can be uncreated. This paradox is the ultimate question asked by God, who is nothing but the ultimate questioner. — Kedar Joshi

What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. — Leonard Cohen

To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality. — John C. Lennox

Think for yourself, and believe in yourself. Keep your skeptical antennae tuned in and in good working order at all times. We are free to develop our own hypotheses, which should be based in available evidence. When it comes to faith, have faith in yourself. And don't forget to love, laugh, be kind to each other. Don't take things so seriously, especially yourself. If the universe is a cosmic joke, remember to giggle. And remember to be astonished. — Dennis McKenna

No matter what system the magician chooses, in order to make it work most effectively he or she must first become attuned to that system's particular way of viewing of the universe. — Lon Milo DuQuette

God is to me that creative force, behind and in the universe, who manifests Himself as energy, as life, as order, as beauty, as thought, as conscience, as love. — Henry Sloane Coffin

Culture is not trivial. It is not a decoration or artifice, the songs we sing or even the prayers we chant. It is a blanket of comfort that gives meaning to lives. It is a body of knowledge that allows the individual to make sense out of the infinite sensations of consciousness, to find meaning and order in a universe that ultimately has neither. Culture is a body of laws and traditions, a moral and ethical code that insulates a people from the barbaric heart that lies just beneath the surface of all human societies and indeed all human beings. Culture alone allows us to reach, as Abraham Lincoln said, for the better angels of our nature. — Wade Davis

Making a child feel unique means making him or her feel uniquely wanted. Having a talent is one thing; feeling that the universe welcomes it is another. Uniqueness without love is barren and very little different from loneliness. Today you can sit down and list each child's talents, having your children participate, in order to reinforce the notion that talents are given to us by spirit for our happiness and fulfillment. — Deepak Chopra

Sometimes you have to fail in order to succeed. Whether we want it or not, there is an order in the universe. It's hard to understand and many, many times it's hard to swallow, but it's there and our choices are our own. Failure is part of life and no one can succeed every time they try something. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It is the business of man to become acquainted with the material universe in all of its manifestations, so far as may be possible, in order to provide a foundation of knowledge on which the reasoning mind of man may increasingly build. — John Andreas Widtsoe

The progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe. — Stephen Hawking

We go through those circumstances in order to evolve into people who can hold to our loving center no matter what the world throws us. A loving universe makes sure that we go through those things too. — Marianne Williamson

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. — Frank Herbert

Kognition? It's just another world, another wanderer, another curvature of time and space. Now we understand that the complexities of universes exist in more than just observable space. If the origin of time was light and fire, then it must be the same for all of us. Light in our eyes, fire in our chests. There are no mistakes in the universe; there are no mistakes in the natural world. There just -is-. Mistakes, even order and chaos, only exist in the observable space of human sight. Philosophies are just how we approach things we don't understand. — Brandon R. Chinn

It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality. — Jean Baudrillard

Sacred scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expressed itself in terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. Any other teaching about the origin and makeup of the universe is so alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven. — Pope John Paul II

We have lost faith in the formal powers of the mind, not, as some suppose, because our universe is too difficult to grasp, but because we lack the inner principle of order. — Lewis Mumford

Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind, what is matter? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? ... To such questions no answers can be found in the laboratory.'23 — John C. Lennox

Nothing is the universe's great storehouse and power plant. Laws give the universe order and stability, while possibilities give the universe dynamic creativity and change. Through the balance of these, the universe maintains its eternal dynamic harmony that provides all beings with the environment in which they can realize their potential value. — Ilchi Lee

It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign of order in nature and to find the causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the relations of man - social and political - and to the entire universe as a whole. — Dmitri Mendeleev

The word "art" means harmony for me. I never speak of mathematics and never bother with the Spirit. My only science is the choice of impressions that the light in the universe furnishes to my consciousness as an artisan which I try, by imposing an Order, and Art, an appropriate representative life, to organize ... — Robert Delaunay

IF you remember every word in this book, your memory will have recorded about two million pieces of information: the order in your brain will have increased by about two million units. However, while you have been reading the book, you will have converted at least a thousand calories of ordered energy, in the form of food, into disordered energy, in the form of heat that you lose to the air around you by convection and sweat. This will increase the disorder of the universe by about twenty million million million million units - or about ten million million million times the increase in order in your brain - and that's if you remember everything in this book. — Stephen Hawking

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior - benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.
'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.'
'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.
'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course - as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness. — Jeanette Winterson

The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an obscene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in such a universe, and that is precisely what the torturers know ... From my cell, I'd hear the whispered voices of children trying to learn what was happening to their parents, and I'd witness the efforts of daughters to win over a guard, to arouse a feeling of tenderness in him, to incite the hope of some lovely future relationship between them in order to learn what was happening to her mother, to get an orange sent to her, to get permission for her to go to the bathroom. — Jacobo Timerman

The scientific revolution proved that there are objective, discernible laws of physical phenomena. Take gravity, for instance. You don't exactly have faith in the law of gravity so much as you just know that the law is the law. Now we are learning that there are objective, discernible laws of non-physical phenomena. These two sets of laws are parallel. Externally, the universe supports our physical survival. Photosynthesis in plants and plankton in the ocean produce oxygen, which we need in order to breathe. Internally the universe also supports our survival. Emotionally and psychologically the internal equivalent to oxygen, what we need in order to survive, is love. And human relationships exist to produce love. — Marianne Williamson

The universe sings a deep, eternal song, sound in waves, in deep sighs, in whispers, in swirling chords and rising, falling tones. The music of the worlds, weaving in a pattern that is both chaos and order, both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end. — Jessica Khoury

I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves in spring. I love the blue sky. I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them. Yet from habit one's heart prizes them. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The time will come that humans will be able to grasp the true essence of matter, so they will no longer need their physical bodies in order to live and to exist in this universe. — Toba Beta

Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together. — Carl Sagan

Adults sometimes think children don't think. That's what propels them to order children around. But children do integrate thoughts and make sense of them. When I was a child, I thought about everything in the universe. — T'Keyah Crystal Keymah

I call myself a nationalist, but my nationalism is as broad as the universe. It includes in its sweep all the nations of the earth. My nationalism includes the well-being of the whole world. I do not want my India to rise on the ashes of other nations. I do not want India to exploit a single human being. I want India to be strong in order that she can infect the other nations also with her strength. Not so with a single nation in Europe today; they do not give strength to the others. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I do have a strong sense of an order in the universe. — Joan Didion

What we know through laws and general principles is a series of connections. But in order for there to be a real universe the connections must be given something to connect; — C.S. Lewis

I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker," he continued, as though he had not heard her. "We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The higher orders [of angels] are presumed to be closer in their nature to God and to function in roles that serve God more directly than the lower orders, which tend to the administration of the physical universe and the service of humankind. Some orders are associated with particular divine qualities - Seraphim with Love, Cherubim with Wisdom, Thrones with Judgment. — David Connolly

It was like listening to the universe in motion. Planets spinning on their appointed courses, the lives of men intersecting and parting, the unimaginable harmony of the human body itself in hierarchy and order, were all implied in the song, but something greater as well: the genius of the composer, which must surely approach the miraculous. Perceval closed his eyes and was lost in the weaving music. — Suzannah Rowntree

With pantheism ... the deity is associated with the order of nature or the universe itself ... when modern scientists such as Einstein and Stephen Hawking mention 'God' in their writing, this is what they seem to mean: that God is Nature. — Victor J. Stenger

The geometry of a universe is very like the grammatical structure of a sentence. Just as a sentence has no structure and no existence apart from the relationships between the words, space has no existence apart from the relationships that hold between the things in the universe. If you change a sentence by taking some words out, or changing their order, its grammatical structure changes. Similarly, the geometry of space changes when the things in the universe change their relationships to one another. — Lee Smolin

Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men: when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon 'savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists.'
("The Wendigo") — Algernon Blackwood

We ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the universe. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the skies so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment. — Johannes Kepler

Some things must remain the same in order for the universe to flow properly. One pebble dashed out across the ocean leaves a lifetime of ripples. They call it the butterfly effect. — Louise Mullins

Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man. — Immanuel Kant

The universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level. The novelty, the new, more complex order, doesn't emerge from the present in a steady stream, nor at all places at the same rate. It comes, as all things do, in rhythmic waves; there will always be times and places of scarcity and stagnation and retrogression. Still, the long-term direction is clear. The intention of the universe is evolution. — George Leonard

From Lee's extensive quotes of Edwards on page 152 we can gather that the reason some reject good thoughts that might order their minds aright is because of a disposition of the heart, or a "taste" for evil. The habit of a person's mind is in accordance with his spiritual appetite, a good man's mind will always suggest and supply good and holy thoughts to connect ideas and information to create a beautiful picture in one's mind of God's orderly universe (Himself at the helm) but the evil man's mind is habitually disorganizing the things of this world or rather dis-integrating them from the knowledge of God, and so Edwards might say that his mind is not a cosmos but a chaos, or a conductor-less cacophony rather than a grand symphony. — Erick John Blore

It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be. — Sigmund Freud

In order to find meaning and readerly pleasure in the universe the writer reveals to us, we feel we must search for the novel's secret center, and we therefore try to embed every detail of the novel in our memory, as if learning each leaf of a tree by heart. — Orhan Pamuk

Work with yourself. Work. If you have a partner, so much the better. Speak. Use whatever process is appropriate. Know that this universe is compassionate, aware and alive. This is a universe of life. This is not a material enterprise. It is a spiritual enterprise and it is filled with loving assistance. This is a thought form that must be in place in order for you to receive assistance. — Gary Zukav