Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
– Stephen Hawking
I certainly don’t have the answers to all life’s problems. While physics and mathematics may
tell how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behaviour because
there are far too many equations to solve. I am no better than anyone else at understanding
what makes people tick, particularly women.
– Stephen Hawking
The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being
recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives
me away.
– Stephen Hawking
Life in the universe will cease to be possible when the universe becomes cold, dark and
empty in about 15 billion years. But the real danger is that the human race will destroy itself
under a much shorter timescale. To have a chance of longterm survival we will have to
spread out into space.
– Stephen Hawking
So Einstein was wrong when he said, “God does not play dice.” Consideration of black holes
suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing
them where they can’t be seen.
– Stephen Hawking
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
– Stephen Hawking
I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.
– Stephen Hawking
One can prove that God doesn’t exist, but science makes God a necessary. The laws of
physics can explain the universe without the need for a creator.
– Stephen Hawking
I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing
to change it, look before they cross the road.
– Stephen Hawking
Can God make a stone that is so heavy that he cannot lift it? I don’t think it is very useful to
speculate on what God might or might not be able to do. Rather, we should examine what he
actually does with the universe we live in. All our observations suggest that it operates
according to well-defined laws. These laws may have been ordained by God but it seems that
he does not intervene in the universe to break the laws, at least once he has set the universe
going.
– Stephen Hawking
If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which
didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.
– Stephen Hawking
Women. They are a complete mystery.
– Stephen Hawking, in response to the question: What do you think most about during the
day?
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
– Stephen Hawking
So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the
universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither
beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
– Stephen Hawking
I think we have a chance to survive long enough to colonize the solar system. However, there
is nowhere else in the solar system anything like as suitable as the earth. So it is not clear if
we would survive if the earth was made unfit for habitation. To ensure our longtime survival we
need to reach the stars; that will take much longer. Let’s hope we can last till then.
– Stephen Hawking
Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.
– Stephen Hawking
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is
it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual
approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of
why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the
bother of existing?
– Stephen Hawking
The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very
average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so
insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like
saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes.
– Stephen Hawking
It is all right to make mistakes; nothing is perfect because with perfection, we would not
exist.
– Stephen Hawking
One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work.
Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky
enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.
– Stephen Hawking
Quiet people have the loudest minds.
– Stephen Hawking
I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into
space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an
optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
– Stephen Hawking
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we
can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
– Stephen Hawking
As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe.
This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked: What did God do before he created
the universe? Augustine didn’t reply: He was preparing Hell for people who asked such
questions. Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and
that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe.
– Stephen Hawking
Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. It will expand
forever, getting emptier and darker. Although the universe doesn’t have an end, it had a
beginning in the big bang.
– Stephen Hawking
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
– Stephen Hawking
Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between
different observations.
– Stephen Hawking
It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe
and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. It’s a crazy world out
there. Be curious.
– Stephen Hawking
We should seek the greatest value of our action.
– Stephen Hawking
I would like nuclear fusion to become a practical power source. It would provide an
inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.
– Stephen Hawking
I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death,
but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.
– Stephen Hawking
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature
that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in
our own image.
– Stephen Hawking
I’m not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of
science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the
laws.
– Stephen Hawking
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we
wouldn’t want to meet.
– Stephen Hawking
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it
exists at all.
– Stephen Hawking
Government works best under the glare of public scrutiny. Absent such scrutiny, abuses
occur.
– Stephen Hawking
I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death,
but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.
– Stephen Hawking
What could define God is thinking of God as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However,
this is not what most people would think of that God. They made a human-like being with
whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe
and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible.
– Stephen Hawking
The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in
an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not
be divinely inspired.
– Stephen Hawking
There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science,
which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
– Stephen Hawking