Stephen Hawking Quotes
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?
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
God not only plays dice, He also confuses us sometimes and throws the dice where they can't be seen.
What is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature.
It matters if you just don't give up.
Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.
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.
When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.
Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.
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.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them.
One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.
The life we have on Earth must have spontaneously generated itself. It must therefore be possible for life to exist spontaneously elsewhere in the universe.
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 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.
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.
The 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.
For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty.
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.
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
