If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size. On the other hand, if it had been greater by a part in a million, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for stars and planets to form.
Stephen HawkingThe universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve the equations, directly in the abstract.
Stephen HawkingThe meaning in life is not out there but inbetween our ears. In many ways this makes us the lords of creation.
Stephen HawkingMaybe I'm being a bit harsh on philosophers, but they have not been very kind to me... I have been variously called nominalist, an instrumentalist, a positivist, a realist, and several other ists. The technique seems refutation by denigration: If you can attach a label to my approach, you don't have to say what is wrong with it... I am sure that Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac didn't worry about whether they were realists or instrumentalists.
Stephen HawkingThe victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.
Stephen HawkingMy expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.
Stephen HawkingThe large-scale homogeneity of the universe makes it very difficult to believe that the structure of the universe is determined by anything so peripheral as some complicated molecular structure on a minor planet orbiting a very average star in the outer suburbs of a fairly typical galaxy.
Stephen HawkingIt's clearly possible for a something to acquire higher intelligence than its ancestors: we evolved to be smarter than our ape-like ancestors, and Einstein was smarter than his parents.
Stephen HawkingSo great a contribution to physics was Two New Sciences that scholars have long maintained that the book anticipated Isaac Newton's laws of motion.
Stephen HawkingSo 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 HawkingObservations 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. One might ask what is before that but the answer is that there is nowhere before the Big Bang just as there is nowhere south of the South Pole.
Stephen HawkingWhat was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?
Stephen HawkingThe progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe.
Stephen HawkingI am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these 'how' and 'why' questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.
Stephen HawkingEvolution has ensured that our brains just aren't equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it's just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.
Stephen HawkingA model is a good model if first it interprets a wide range of observations in terms of a simple and elegant model, and second if the model makes definite predictions that can be tested, and possibly falsified, by observation.
Stephen HawkingA theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.
Stephen HawkingThe increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.
Stephen HawkingThe past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.
Stephen HawkingMy goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
Stephen HawkingWhy are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.
Stephen HawkingThe "Powers That Be" are not smart enough to engineer Armageddon, but they may yet be stupid enough. If governments are involved in covering up the knowledge of aliens, then they are doing a much better job of it than they seem to do at anything else.
Stephen HawkingThere are no black holes - in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity. There are however apparent horizons which persist for a period of time.
Stephen HawkingWhen I was first diagnosed with ALS, I was given two years to live. Now 45 years later, I am doing pretty well.
Stephen Hawking[On President Bush's plan to get to Mars in 10 years] Stupid. Robots would do a better job and be much cheaper because you don't have to bring them back.
Stephen HawkingSome individuals are better able than others to draw the right conclusions about the world about them and act accordingly. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce so their pattern of behaviour and thought will become dominant
Stephen HawkingThere 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 HawkingIt [AI] would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded.
Stephen HawkingPhilosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.
Stephen Hawking