Professor Hubert Farnsworth quotes from Futurama

Professor Farnsworth

If you don't crank out new episodes quickly, Fry will be dead by lunch!... I'm having ham salad.

Leela

But this is impossible. To keep him from running out, we'll need to produce an hour-long episode every hour. Nonstop. Forever!

Professor Farnsworth

If Law & Order can do it, so can you.

Professor Farnsworth

The warehouse is expanding beyond the sun! Mars! Jupiter!

Fry

The one with the onion rings!

Amy

Um, Professor, isn't it risky to go back in time and change history?

Professor Farnsworth

Oh my, yes. But I'll go alone to minimize the chance of anyone becoming their own grandfather.

Fry

These things happen.

Leela

No, they don't!

Hermes

Now, hold on. Xmas isn't for a week. Until then, we've got non-stop busy work.

Professor Farnsworth

Oh, fuff! Let's stop pretending we do anything around here. Everyone, take the week off and be with your so-called loved ones!

Amy

Really?

Hermes

I forgot I had loved ones!

Leela

It's a Human Resources miracle!

Amy

You know, I heard there's not really even a virus at all. It's just a big hoax, like the moon landing.

Professor Farnsworth

You were on the moon last week! You grew up on Mars!

Amy

That's what they want you to think!

Professor Farnsworth

[about Hermes' voodoo vaccine] What bunch of mumbo-gumboǃ Anything I can't understand is fakeǃ [LaBarbara gives him the vaccine; he immediately cheers up] Ah, that's betterǃ Hermes, my friend, I owe you an apology for being so anti-voodoo. It may seem bat-whack crazy to a layman, but I see now that voodoo methods are built on centuries of brilliant scholarship.

Hermes

It's okay, Professor. And it's understandable. After all, any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science.

Fry

Wha... What happened? Am I alive?

Professor Farnsworth

If you were dead, how could you ask such a dumb question? You're as alive and stupid as ever!

Hermes

So, do those people in the casserole know they're in a simulation, or do they think that they're real?

Professor Farnsworth

Of course, they think they're real. To them, the rules of my software are just their laws of physics.

Amy

But, we think we're real. Couldn't our universe also be a simulation?

Professor Farnsworth

Absolutely not! No chance. The very idea is preposterous!

Hermes

How can you be so sure?

Professor Farnsworth

Because it's computationally impossible! For example, every atom in the universe is affected whenever one little thing moves.

Bender

Like my ass? Oh yeah!

Professor Farnsworth

That's a perfect example, Bender, and some pretty decent twerking. My software can't possibly compute the gravitational changes between Bender's ass and every other particle, so I had to have the information travel outward gradually, at a fixed speed.

Amy

Like the speed of light in our universe?

Professor Farnsworth

Right! Oh, fuff. That's just a coincidence. I had to cut other corners, too. I mean, my simulation doesn't even keep track of exactly where everything is. [...] Another convenient example. My lazy software wouldn't even decide which cup the ball's in until someone actually looked at it. Until then, it's just sort of in both.

Amy

So your programming shortcut is like quantum mechanics in our world?

Professor Farnsworth

Exactly like that! Hm, interesting. I guess what I'm trying to say is our universe is probably also a simulation.

Hermes

But that's the exact opposite of what you said one minute ago!

Professor Farnsworth

New evidence was presented and I changed my mind. I'm a scientist, not a...

Bender

Idiot?

Professor Farnsworth

...politician.

Professor, if you can make a whole simulated universe, isn't it possible that our own universe is also a simulation?

Absolutely not! You sound like a stoned freshman!

I mean, what if our laws of physics are just the computer code of some big brilliant professor playing god up there?

Professor

Nailed it!

Hm. Quantum mechanics is pretty ridiculous, but it's a moot point. Even if we are living in a simulation, there's no possible way of knowing. [...]

If our universe is a simulation, then it's running on some kind of computer, right? [...] Suppose we made something happen that was impossible for that big computer to simulate.

It would overload! [...]

Probably stuff would pixelate and look weird!

The laws of physics would fail!

Like playing a new video game on a crummy underpowered game system!