Stephen Hawking Quotes

So next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.

Scientific discovery may not be better than sex, but the satisfaction lasts longer.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

We live in the most probable of all possible worlds.

Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker.

Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.

I may contradict myself, but at least I don't contradict myself.

What is important is that we have the ability to create.

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. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

We are only the temporary custodians of the particles which we are made of. They will go on to lead a future existence in the enormous universe that made them

If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would try to pass them.

Many people find the universe confusing - it's not.

Never put off the work till tomorrow what you can put off today.

Government works best under the glare of public scrutiny. Absent such scrutiny, abuses occur.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory.

Science will win because it works.

In A Brief History Of Time I used the word "God" like Einstein did as a shorthand for the laws of physics. However, this is not what most people mean by God, so I have decided not to use the term. The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a God.

There are plenty of dead scientists I admire, but I can't think of any living ones. This is probably because it is only in retrospect that one can see who made the important contributions.

thus, in a sense, we are all doomed. even if we stay away from black holes

In this way, Edwin Hubble worked out the distances to nine different galaxies. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars.

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations.

Although quantum mechanics has been around for nearly 70 years, it is still not generally understood or appreciated, even by those that use it to do calculations.

There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe and what can be more special than that there is no boundary?

I'd say I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid He might hear me.

Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

More often than politicians, but not as often as they should.

Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a 'crank.'

The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

You can't regulate every lab in the world.

Then we shall... be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.

Now, radical forward thinking is offering hope for the future: Replacement body parts to order. A team of scientists in California believe that if you can design them on a computer, you should be able to print them out.

It is tribute to how far we have come in theoretical physics that it now takes enormous machines and a great deal of money to perform experiments whose results we can not predict.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one's memories.

Doing a job RIGHT the first time gets the job done. Doing the job WRONG fourteen times gives you job security.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

It is impossible to imagine a four-dimensional space. I personally find it hard enough to visualize a three-dimensional space!

I've noticed that even people who believe in fate look both ways before crossing the street.

So when people ask me if I believe God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the earth; the earth is a sphere, it doesn't have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.

I enjoy all forms of music - pop, classical and opera.

Perhaps we could write code to optimize code, then run that code through the code optimizer?

A lot of prizes have been awarded for showing the universe is not as simple as we might have thought.

I have to speak through a computer... in my mind, I am free. Free to explore the universe and ask the big questions...

There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you ever meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.

In fact, if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that produced life like ours are immense.

What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.