Stephen Hawking Quotes

133 Sourced Quotes

Many people would claim that the boundary conditions are not part of physics but belong to metaphysics or religion. They would claim that nature had complete freedom to start the universe off any way it wanted. That may be so, but it could also have made it evolve in a completely arbitrary and random manner. Yet all the evidence is that it evolves in a regular way according to certain laws. It would therefore seem reasonable to suppose that there are also laws governing the boundary conditions.

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
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.

Stephen Hawking
One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?

Stephen Hawking
Cosmology used to be considered a pseudoscience and the preserve of physicists who might have done some useful work in their earlier years but who had gone mystic in their dotage.

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
In effect, we have redefined the task of science to be the discovery of laws that will enable us to predict events up to the limits set by the uncertainty principle.

Stephen Hawking
However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

Stephen Hawking