Henry Norris Russell Quotations

Just what future the Designer of the universe has provided for the souls of men I do not know, I cannot prove. But I find that the whole order of Nature confirms my confidence that, if it is not like our noblest hopes and dreams, it will transcend them.

Conflict between science and religion a dangerous foe.

For myself, if I am to stake all I have and hope to be upon anything, I will venture it upon the abounding fullness of God - upon the assurance that, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts.

Not as a demonstrated natural law, but as a working hypothesis.

The need for some venture of faith still remains; one must stake one's life upon something.

When immortality becomes for us no longer a matter of academic discussion, but the most vital of all questions; we shall find our comfort where so many before us have found it, in the ancient words.

Far from being hostile to religion is capable of rendering religion important services.

One of the most striking results of modern investigation has been the way in which several different and quite independent lines of evidence indicate that a very great event occurred about two thousand million years ago. The radio-active evidence for the age of meteorites; and the estimated time for the tidal evolution of the Moon's orbit (though this is much rougher), all agree in their testimony, and, what is far more important, the red-shift in the nebulae indicates that this date is fundamental, not merely in the history of our system, but in that of the material universe as a whole.