Stephen Hawking Quotes

133 Sourced Quotes

Have we been visited by aliens?... I don't believe we have. I think that any such visit would be obvious and probably unpleasant. What would be the point of aliens revealing themselves only to a few cranks?

Stephen Hawking
I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.

Stephen Hawking
Science could predict that the universe must have had a beginning.

Stephen Hawking
So 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 Hawking
The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological — technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science.

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

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
Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E = mc squared. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers.

Stephen Hawking
Bodies like the earth are not made to move on curved orbits by a force called gravity; instead, they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in a curved space, which is called a geodesic. A geodesic is the shortest (or longest) path between two nearby points.

Stephen Hawking
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.

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

Stephen Hawking
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.

Stephen Hawking
The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves

Stephen Hawking
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.

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
The subject of this book is the structure of space-time on length-scales from 10-13cm, the radius of an elementary particle, up to 1028cm, the radius of the universe.... we base our treatment on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe.

Stephen Hawking
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

Stephen Hawking
Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

Stephen Hawking
If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make reality the basis of our philosophy?...But we cannot distinguish what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what reality is independent of a theory.

Stephen Hawking
I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.
[Hawking adopted this statement from a remark made to him by his former post-doc, Nathan Myhrvold.]

Stephen Hawking
Look up at the stars, and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

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

Stephen Hawking
The rate of progress is so rapid that what one learns at school or university is always a bit out of date. Only a few people can keep up with the rapidly advancing frontier of knowledge, and they have to devote their whole time to it and specialize in a small area. The rest of the population has little idea of the advances that are being made or the excitement they are generating.

Stephen Hawking