Quotes By Stephen Hawking

God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.

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.

Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

You can't regulate every lab in the world.

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.

I would like nuclear fusion to become a practical power source. It would provide an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.

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.

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.

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

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

Maybe I don't have the most common kind of motor neuron disease, which usually kills in two or three years.

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.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can't solve the equations, directly in the abstract.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

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

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

Theology is unnecessary.

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

One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.

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.

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.

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.