Stephen Hawking Quotes

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.

I used to think information was destroyed in black hole. This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science.

Look up at the stars, not down at your feet.

I thought Eddie Redmayne portrayed me very well... At times I thought he was me.

I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or a partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it.

Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an ass.

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

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.

Of course it is possible that UFO's really do contain aliens as many people believe, and the government is hushing it up

If everything in the universe depends upon everything else in a fundamental way, it might be impossible to get close to a full solution by investigating parts of the problem in isolation.

Although I cannot move, and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind, I am free.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.

Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this.

The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why bother to learn.

Obviously, because of my disability, I need assistance. But I have always tried to overcome the limitations of my condition and lead as full a life as possible. I have traveled the world, from the Antarctic to zero gravity.

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. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

Maxwell is the physicist's physicist.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

If 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.

One could say: "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary." The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.

We see the universe the way it is because we exist.

Science can lift people out of poverty and cure disease. That, in turn, will reduce civil unrest.

Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.

It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.

To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool.

The moment you understand the whole Universe, is the moment you slightly begin to understand the way God's mind works

The doctor who diagnosed me with ALS, or motor neuron disease, told me that it would kill me in two or three years.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

It is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

I would rather be right than rigorous.

Not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.

Religion believes in miracles, but these aren't compatible with science.

I put a lot of effort into writing 'A Briefer History' at a time when I was critically ill with pneumonia because I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.

I like physics, but I love cartoons.

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long term survival, is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.

It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.

It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God.

If it were only a few degrees, that would be serious, but we could adapt to it. But the danger is the warming process might be unstable and run away. We could end up like Venus, covered in clouds and with the surface temperature of 400 degrees. It could be too late if we wait until the bad effects of warming become obvious. We need action now to reduce emission of carbon dioxide.

One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!

If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?