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.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
Quiet people have the loudest minds.
Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
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.
My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus." [The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]
![[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.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/stephen-hawking-50095.jpg)
[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 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.
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street
Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.
One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn't exist.....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 universe doesn't allow perfection.
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.
I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die.
If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?
Not only does God play dice but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
You cannot understand the glories of the universe without believing there is some Supreme Power behind it.
People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.
I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.
It matters if you just don't give up.
The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
I regard the afterlife to be a fairy story for people that are afraid of the dark
If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,
One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer.
The idea of 10 dimensions might sound exciting, but they would cause real problems if you forget where you parked your car.
Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge.
Time and space are finite in extent, but they don't have any boundary or edge. They would be like the surface of the earth, but with two more dimensions.
I like physics, but I love cartoons.
Government works best under the glare of public scrutiny. Absent such scrutiny, abuses occur.
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves
Thus, in a sense, we are all doomed. even if we stay away from black holes
God abhors a naked singularity.
Simplicity is a matter of taste
The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.
Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end.
We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe
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.
 will tell. ){kind=small}
Only time(whatever that may be) will tell.
We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
If the government is covering up knowledge of aliens, they are doing a better job of it than they do at anything else.
The universe does not behave according to our pre-conceived ideas. It continues to surprise us.
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.
People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.
What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don’t shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.
Women. They are a complete mystery to me.
However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. Where there's life, there's hope.
What did God do before he created the universe?
Not to take this web of dualities as a sign we are on the right track would be a bit like believing that God put fossils into the rocks in order to mislead Darwin about the evolution of life.
There is no way that we can predict the weather six months ahead beyond giving the seasonal average
It's the gravity that shapes the large scale structure of the universe, even though it is the weakest of four categories of forces.
 miles, the size of the observable universe. ){kind=small}
A million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe.
If one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be *psychologically* disabled as well.
You cannot predict the future.
The Universe in a Nutshell
Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Each exists for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe.
Why are we here? where do we come from? traditionally,these are questions for philosophy,but philosophy is dead
 However bad life may seem (...) While there’s life, there is hope. ){kind=small}
There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. (...) However bad life may seem (...) While there’s life, there is hope.
The people who actually make the advances in theoretical physics don't think in these categories that the philosophers and the historians of science subsequently invent for them
Scientists tend to risk theories they admire
If you understand how the universe operates, you control it, in a way.
It is said that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe is the ultimate free lunch.
The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful and about a hundred thousand time smaller than the one computer at MIT in 1965.
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.
This means it will take about a thousand million million million million years for the earth to run into the sun, so there’s no immediate cause for worry!
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.
In an infinite universe, every point can be regarded as the center, because every point has an infinite number of stars on each side of it. The
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. Stephen Hawking
The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. —ALBERT EINSTEIN
It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.
Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
Stephen Hawking said that his quest is simply "trying to understand the mind of God".
Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.
Einstein never accepted that the universe was governed by chance; his feelings were summed up in his famous statement “God does not play dice.
Do we really have reason to believe that an objective reality exists?
Or in other words, why does disorder increase in the same direction of time as that in which the universe expands?
The most important point: that the universe is governed by a set of rational laws that we can discover and understand.
We create history by our observation, rather than history creating us.
An elipse is an elongated circle
God not only plays dice, he also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.
However, one cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.
The last chapter discussed why we see time go forward: why disorder increases and why we remember the past but not the future.
There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don’t shake hands!
I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death!
Never scrub your arse with a wire brush.
If a star were a grain of salt, you could fit all the stars visible to the naked eye on a teaspoon, but all the stars in the universe would fill a ball more than eight miles wide.
, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason. For then we would know the mind of God. ){kind=small}
If we find the answer to that (why the universe exists), it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason. For then we would know the mind of God.
If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no observational consequences.
But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!
. ){kind=small}
No boundary condition: The idea that the universe is finite but has no boundary (in imaginary time).
