Steven Weinberg

Beyond belief: science, religion, reason, and survival.

"The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion... Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization." [Lennox's response on p18 of Gunning for God "the observant reader will not miss the totalitarian sounding word 'anything' in Weinberg's statement."]

Life in the Quantum Universe

"how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values."

Dreams of a Final Theory

"The more we know of the cosmos, the more meaningless it appears."

The First Three Minutes

Humans are "just a more or less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes.." p144
I consider the physics in this book to be quite good and I have used it a lot. See Big Bang reference.