Stephen Hawking Quotes

133 Sourced Quotes

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.

Stephen Hawking
The zero-G part was wonderful and the higher-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come!

Stephen Hawking
If there is one thing we can be sure enough of in physics it is that all time exists with equal reality.

Stephen Hawking
You would have to fly around the world four hundred million times to add one second to your life; but your life would be reduced by more than that by all those airline meals.

Stephen Hawking
Time refuses to be simplified or reduced. You cannot say that it is only found in the mind or only in the universe, that it runs only in one direction, or in everyone imaginable. That it exists only in biological substructure, or is only a social convention. It is all of these things.

Stephen Hawking
There may be no ultimate theory, and even if there is, we may not find it. But it is surely better to strive for a complete understanding than to despair of the human mind.

Stephen Hawking
We still believe that the universe should be logical and beautiful; we just dropped the word "God."

Stephen Hawking
Each equation, I was told, would halve the sales of the book. But that was okay. Equations are necessary if you are doing accountancy, but they are the boring part of mathematics. Most of the interesting ideas can be conveyed by words or pictures.

Stephen Hawking
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.

Stephen Hawking
The universe of Eastern mysticism is an illusion, A physicist who attempts to link it with his own work has abandoned physics.

Stephen Hawking
In an infinite number universe, every point can be regarded as the center, because every point has an infinity of stars on each side of it.

Stephen Hawking
I do not agree with the view that the universe is a mystery, something that one can have intuition about but never fully analyze or comprehend.

Stephen Hawking
There is a two-way trade between science fiction and science. Science fiction suggests ideas that scientists incorporate into their theories, but sometimes science turns up notions that are stranger than any science fiction.

Stephen Hawking
We may not yet be able to boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before, but at least we can do it in the mind.

Stephen Hawking
The light that we see from distant galaxies left them millions of years ago, and in the case of the most distant object we have seen, the light left some eight billions years ago. Thus, when we look at the universe, we are seeing it as it was in the past.

Stephen Hawking
Or in other words, why does disorder increase in the same direction of time as that in which the universe expands?

Stephen Hawking
So 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 Hawking
We see the universe the way it is because we exist.

Stephen Hawking
There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you ever meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.

Stephen Hawking
I think the universe is completely self-contained. It doesn't have any beginning or end, it doesn't have any creation or destruction.

Stephen Hawking
But a machine that was powerful enough to accelerate particles to the grand unification energy would have to be as big as the Solar System - and would be unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.

Stephen Hawking
The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron.... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.

Stephen Hawking
We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?

Stephen Hawking
The stars and galaxies that fill our view as we survey the depths of the Universe are really just a froth delineating the massive, dark unseen structures beneath.

Stephen Hawking
There's nothing like the Eureka moment, of discovering something that no one knew before.

Stephen Hawking
But if he [God] had started it [the universe] off in such an incomprehensible way, why did he choose to let it evolve according to laws that we could understand?

Stephen Hawking
Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe.

Stephen Hawking
Science fiction like Star Trek is not only good fun but it also serves a serious purpose, that of expanding the human imagination.

Stephen Hawking
There may be ultimate answers, but if there are, I would be sorry if we were to find them. For my own sake I would like very much to find them, but their discovery would leave nothing for those coming after me to seek. Each generation builds on the advances of the previous generation, and this is as it should be. As human beings, we need the quest.

Stephen Hawking
It is impossible to imagine a four-dimensional space. I personally find it hard enough to visualize a three-dimensional space!

Stephen Hawking