One can see from space how the human race has changed the Earth. Nearly all of the available land has been cleared of forest and is now used for agriculture or urban development. The polar icecaps are shrinking and the desert areas are increasing. At night, the Earth is no longer dark, but large areas are lit up. All of this is evidence that human exploitation of the planet is reaching a critical limit. But human demands and expectations are ever-increasing. We cannot continue to pollute the atmosphere, poison the ocean and exhaust the land. There isn't any more available.
Stephen HawkingIt often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find they don't work, so I have to give it up.
Stephen HawkingMaybe I don't have the most common kind of motor neuron disease, which usually kills in two or three years.
Stephen HawkingIn real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science break down.
Stephen HawkingIf there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do.
Stephen Hawking