3 Body Problem Quotes

Da Shi: Anything strange happening to scientists is relevant. Anyone connected to anything strange happening to scientists is relevant.

Investigator: Who decides what’s relevant?

Da Shi: Wade.

Investigator: Who decides he decides?

Da Shi: Governments.

Investigator: Which ones?

Da Shi: Most of them. They’re not too keen on the notion of science being broken.

Investigator: I don’t really understand the science that’s broken, to be honest.

Da Shi: I don’t understand it either, but it’s not good. Just be glad you’re not a scientist. Sh*t time to be a scientist.

Thomas Wade: Clarence, you’ve been fired from Scotland Yard, MI5, and OSCT. That must be some kind of record.

Da Shi: I’ve got a knack for failing upwards.

Thomas Wade: You don’t fail any higher than this. This is your last-chance saloon.

Tatiana (to Auggie): Tomorrow, at midnight, at exactly midnight, go outside and look up at the sky. Has the universe ever winked at you? Tomorrow at midnight. (about the countdown): You don’t want it to get to zero. Nothing good ever happens at zero.

Jack Rooney (to Saul and Auggie): Are you two fighting right now? Or f**king? Oh! Fighting and f**king. (everyone starts protesting and telling him to be quiet) You wanna know as well.

Vera Ye: Do you believe in God?

Saul Durand: Is that what it’s come to? No. I don’t. I accept that this defies all known laws of physics, but… I don’t think that’s an argument for God.

Vera Ye: So, what’s left?

Saul Durand: According to the experiments, all of our theories are wrong. All of them. All of the physics of the past 60 years is wrong. Science is broken.

Saul Durand: You told us, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”

Vera Ye: I think that was Feynman. But yeah.

(Ye Wenjie is watching a struggle session, where her father is being questioned…)

Shao Lin: Ye Zhetai. You cannot deny you lectured on the counterrevolutionary Big Bang theory.

Ye Zhetai: It is the most plausible explanation for the origin of the universe.

Shao Lin: Lies! The theory claims to know when time began.

Red Guard Girl: Time began? What came before time?

Shao Lin: It leaves open a place to be filled by God.

Red Guard Girl: Are you suggesting God exists?

Ye Zhetai: Science has given no evidence either way.

Narration: As children we fear the dark. Anything might be out there. The unknown troubles us. There are those who say we should not inquire too closely into who else might be living in that darkness. Better not to know. But we continue to search. Life looks for life.