Stephen Hawking Quotes

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.

My wife and I love each other very much.

I believe there are no questions that science can’t answer about a physical universe.

I was never top of the class at school, but my classmates must have seen potential in me, because my nickname was ‚Einstein.‘

I can’t disguise myself with a wig and dark glasses – the wheelchair gives me away.

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

The Planck satellite may detect the imprint of the gravitational waves predicted by inflation. This would be quantum gravity written across the sky.

I think we have a good chance of surviving long enough to colonize the solar system.

Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.

I enjoy all forms of music – pop, classical and opera.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to minus 271.3*C – not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it.

Obviously, because of my disability, I need assistance. But I have always tried to overcome the limitations of my condition and lead as full a life as possible. I have traveled the world, from the Antarctic to zero gravity.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

Theoretical physics is one of the few fields in which being disabled is no handicap – it is all in the mind.

I believe in universal health care. And I am not afraid to say so.

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

I have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America.

I had not expected ‚A Brief History of Time‘ to be a best seller. It was my first popular book and aroused a great deal of interest. Initially, many people found it difficult to understand. I therefore decided to try to write a new version that would be easier to follow.

I have visited Japan several times and have always been shown wonderful hospitality.

When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

For years, my early work with Roger Penrose seemed to be a disaster for science. It showed that the universe must have begun with a singularity, if Einstein’s general theory of relativity is correct. That appeared to indicate that science could not predict how the universe would begin.

It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. We also happen to be sociable creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.

My father was a research scientist in tropical medicine, so I always assumed I would be a scientist, too. I felt that medicine was too vague and inexact, so I chose physics.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

There could be shadow galaxies, shadow stars, and even shadow people.

Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a ‚crank.‘

Science can lift people out of poverty and cure disease. That, in turn, will reduce civil unrest.

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.

I used to think information was destroyed in black hole. This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science.

Many badly needed goals, like fusion and cancer cure, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more.

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

What I’d really like to control is not machines, but people.

To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities… space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.

‚The Simpsons‘ appearances were great fun. But I don’t take them too seriously. I think ‚The Simpsons‘ have treated my disability responsibly.

I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.

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.

The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.

I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their own life, and those that help them should be free from prosecution.

Although almost every theoretical physicist agrees with my prediction that a black hole should glow like a hot body, it would be very difficult to verify experimentally because the temperature of a macroscopic black hole is so low.

There is no physical law precluding particles from being organised in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains.

It was Einstein’s dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein’s day hadn’t made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal.

Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker.

Our minds work in real time, which begins at the Big Bang and will end, if there is a Big Crunch – which seems unlikely, now, from the latest data showing accelerating expansion. Consciousness would come to an end at a singularity.

Some scientists think it may be possible to capture a wormhole and enlarge it many trillions of times to make it big enough for a human or even a spaceship to enter.

One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.

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

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

My work and my family are very important to me.

We live in a bewildering world.

We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.

According to ‚M‘ theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, ‚M‘ theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing.

My discovery that black holes emit radiation raised serious problems of consistency with the rest of physics. I have now resolved these problems, but the answer turned out to be not what I expected.

Earth might one day soon resemble the planet Venus.