Top 105 Stephen Hawking Quotes

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.

I had not expected ‘A Brief History of Time’ to be a best seller.

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.

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.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

Cambridge is one of the best universities in the world, especially in my field.

Among physicists, I’m respected I hope.

My three children have brought me great joy.

My ideal role would be a baddie in a James Bond film. I think the wheelchair and the computer voice would fit the part.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren’t equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it’s just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.

The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986. I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it.

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.

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.

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.

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

I’m an atheist.

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.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house.

Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible.

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

As a child, I wanted to know how things worked and to control them. With a friend, I built a number of complicated models that I could control.

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

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time.

In Britain, like most of the developed world, stem-cell research is regarded as a great opportunity. America will be left behind if it doesn’t change policy.

Theology is unnecessary.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn’t threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.

I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.

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.

I am in touch with a company that hopes to replicate my voice. However, they are not replicating my original voice – if they did that, I would sound like a man in his 20s, which would be very strange! They are actually trying to replicate the synthesizer that sits on my wheelchair.

As Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, triggering what Vernor Vinge called a ‘singularity.’

We live in a bewildering world.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

Some forms of motor neuron disease are genetically linked, but I have no indication that my kind is. No other member of my family has had it. But I would be in favour of abortion if there was a high risk.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. 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?

The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

The Paralympic Games is about transforming our perception of the world.

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe.

We think that life develops spontaneously on Earth, so it must be possible for life to develop on suitable planets elsewhere in the universe. But we don’t know the probability that a planet develops life.

There are no black holes in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity.

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

Women. They are a complete mystery.

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental equations of physics.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

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

It is extremely important to me to write for children.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

Only black holes of very low mass would emit a significant amount of radiation.

Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.

If I had to choose a superhero to be, I would pick Superman. He’s everything that I’m not.

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.

I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.

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

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.

God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator.

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

Exploration by real people inspires us.

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

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.