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There is one metalaw of science: it cannot exist without structured things. Structured variety is the ground of being. That is what gives content to both science and life.

— Julian Barbour Bit from It (2011)

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More quotes by Julian Barbour

Information theory would never have got off the ground if structured things—configurations—did not exist.

Bit from It (2011)

Ontological primacy should not be given to information but to things, as has always been the standpoint of realists.

Bit from It (2011)

Thus, even now, three and a half centuries after Galileo... it is still remarkably difficult to say categorically whether the earth moves...

Shannon-type message sources could not exist if the universe were not subject to laws of nature and far from thermal equilibrium.

Bit from It (2011)

Richard Feynman... said, "Time is what happens when nothing else does." ...[T]hat's ...not the right way to think about time.

Julian Barbour on the nature of time (2009)

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Julian Barbour (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.