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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

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So Next Time Someone

Stephen Hawking

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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.

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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.

When Two's Company, Three's The Result!

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.

We Are All Different. There Is No Such Thing As A Standard Or Run-of-the-mill Human Being, But We Share The Same Human Spirit.

There Is A Fundamental Difference Between Religion, Which Is Based On Authority, [and] Science, Which Is Based On Observation And Reason. Science Will Win Because It Works.

God Abhors A Naked Singularity.

This Required Abandoning The Idea That There Is A Universal Quantity Called Time That All Clocks Measure. Instead, Everyone Would Have His Own Personal Time. The Clocks Of Two People Would Agree If They Were At Rest With Respect To Each Other But Not If They Were Moving. This Has Been Confirmed By A Number Of Experiments, Including One In Which An Extremely Accurate Timepiece Was Flown Around The World And Then Compared With One That Had Stayed In Place. If You Wanted To Live Longer, You Could Keep Flying To The East So The Speed Of The Plane Added To The Earth

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There Ought To Be Something Very Special About The Boundary Conditions Of The Universe And What Can Be More Special Than That There Is No Boundary?

[question: What Do You Think Was The Most Important Physics Idea To Emerge This Year?] We Won't Know For A Few Years.

Though We Feel We Can Choose What We Do, Our Understanding Of The Molecular Basis Of Biology Shows That Biological Processes Are Governed By The Laws Of Physics And Chemistry And Therefore Are As Determined As The Orbits Of The Planets.

People Won't Have Time For You If You Are Always Angry Or Complaining.

Always Complaining

There Is No Way That We Can Predict The Weather Six Months Ahead Beyond Giving The Seasonal Average.

Scientific Discovery May Not Be Better Than Sex, But The Satisfaction Lasts Longer.

If Time Travel Is Possible, Where Are The Tourists From The Future?

I Think [contacting An Alien Civilization] Would Be A Disaster. The Extraterrestrials Would Probably Be Far In Advance Of Us. The History Of Advanced Races Meeting More Primitive People On This Planet Is Not Very Happy, And They Were The Same Species. I Think We Should Keep Our Heads Low.

Disability Need Not Be An Obstacle To Success.

We Are Only The Temporary Custodians Of The Particles Which We Are Made Of. They Will Go On To Lead A Future Existence In The Enormous Universe That Made Them

I Think My Dad [ Stephen Hawking] Would Have Been Pleased If I Had Turned Out A Scientist Because He Truly Believes That Is The Most Interesting Career Open To Anyone. But He Also Believes That You Have To Follow Your Own Path In Life And So He Certainly Wasn't Going To Push Me Toward Theoretical Physics When It Didn't Look Like I Was Going In That Direction Naturally.

I Put A Lot Of Effort Into Writing 'a Briefer History' At A Time When I Was Critically Ill With Pneumonia Because I Think That It's Important For Scientists To Explain Their Work, Particularly In Cosmology. This Now Answers Many Questions Once Asked Of Religion.

If I Have Questions About The Universe On My Mind When I Go To Bed, I Can't Turn Off. I Dream Equations All Night.

When I Hear Of Schrödinger's Cat, I Reach For My Pistol.

Or In Other Words, Why Does Disorder Increase In The Same Direction Of Time As That In Which The Universe Expands?

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.

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.

Uncertainty Principle

A Million Million Million Million (1 With Twenty-four Zeros After It) Miles, The Size Of The Observable Universe.

One Can't Prove That God Doesn't Exist. But Science Makes God Unnecessary. The Laws Of Physics Can Explain The Universe Without The Need For A Creator.

A Snooze Button Is A Poor Substitute For No Alarm Clock At All.

Physics As We Know It Will Be Over In Six Months - Max Born

There Should Be A Better Way To Start A Day Than Waking Up Every Morning.

I Enjoy All Forms Of Music - Pop, Classical And Opera.

Many People Do Not Like The Idea That Time Has A Beginning, Probably Because It Smacks Of Divine Intervention. (the Catholic Church, On The Other Hand, Seized On The Big Bang Model And In 1951 Officially Pronounced It To Be In Accordance With The Bible.

I'm A Child Myself, In The Sense That I'm Still Looking. Children Are Fascinated By Black Holes And Ask Me Questions. I Find They Soon Get The Idea If It Is Explained In Nontechnical Language.

I Am Discounting The Reports Of Ufos. Why Would They Appear Only To Cranks And Weirdos?

No One Undertakes Research In Physics With The Intention Of Winning A Prize. It Is The Joy Of Discovering Something No One Knew Before.

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.

Simplicity Is A Matter Of Taste

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.

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Time And Space Are Finite In Extent, But They Don't Have Any Boundary Or Edge. They Would Be Like The Surface Of The Earth, But With Two More Dimensions.

Teamwork...means Never Having To Take All The Blame Yourself.

The Life We Have On Earth Must Have Spontaneously Generated Itself. It Must Therefore Be Possible For Life To Generate Spontaneously Elsewhere In The Universe.

I'm Really Easy To Get Along With Once You See It My Way.

My Goal Is Simple. It Is A Complete Understanding Of The Universe, Why It Is As It Is And Why It Exists At All.

The Large-scale Homogeneity Of The Universe Makes It Very Difficult To Believe That The Structure Of The Universe Is Determined By Anything So Peripheral As Some Complicated Molecular Structure On A Minor Planet Orbiting A Very Average Star In The Outer Suburbs Of A Fairly Typical Galaxy.

There Is No Prescribed Route To Follow To Arrive At A New Idea. You Have To Make The Intuitive Leap.

I Think The Universe Was Spontaneously Created Out Of Nothing, According To The Laws Of Science. It Has No Beginning And No End.

It Is A Waste Of Time To Be Angry About My Disability. One Has To Get On With Life And I Haven't Done Badly. People Won't Have Time For You If You Are Always Angry Or Complaining.

It Is Not Clear That Intelligence Has Any Long-term Survival Value.

Life Would Be Tragic If It Weren't Funny.

Nuclear Weapons Need Large Facilities, But Genetic Engineering Can Be Done In A Small Lab. You Can't Regulate Every Lab In The World. The Danger Is That Either By Accident Or Design, We Create A Virus That Destroys Us.

When I Was First Diagnosed With Als, I Was Given Two Years To Live. Now 45 Years Later, I Am Doing Pretty Well.

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If Human Life Were Long Enough To Find The Ultimate Theory, Everything Would Have Been Solved By Previous Generations. Nothing Would Be Left To Be Discovered.

In Fact, If One Considers The Possible Constants And Laws That Could Have Emerged, The Odds Against A Universe That Produced Life Like Ours Are Immense.

We Don't Let Animals Suffer, So Why Humans?

The More You Learn, The More You Know. The More You Know, The More You Forget. The More You Forget, The Less You Know. So Why Bother To Learn.

In Real Time, The Universe Has A Beginning And An End At Singularities That Form A Boundary To Space-time And At Which The Laws Of Science Break Down.

Success Is A Relative Term. It Brings So Many Relatives.

Perhaps We Could Write Code To Optimize Code, Then Run That Code Through The Code Optimizer?

The Real Challenge Is To Work Out What Aliens Might Actually Be Like.

We Are All Now Connected By The Internet, Like Neurons In A Giant Brain.

Science Can Lift People Out Of Poverty And Cure Disease. That, In Turn, Will Reduce Civil Unrest.

The Human Failing I Would Most Like To Correct Is Aggression.

My Expectations Were Reduced To Zero When I Was 21. Everything Since Then Has Been A Bonus.

Many Badly Needed Goals, Like Fusion And Cancer Cure, Would Be Achieved Much Sooner If We Invested More.

We Got Through All Of Genesis And Part Of Exodus Before I Left. One Of The Main Things I Learned From This Exercise Was Not To Begin A Sentence With "and." When I Pointed Out That Most Sentences In The Bible Began With "and," I Was Told That English Had Changed Since The Time Of King James. In That Case, I Argued, Why Make Us Read The Bible? But It Was In Vain. Robert Graves At That Time Was Very Keen On The Symbolism And Mysticism In The Bible.

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We Have Made Remarkable Progress In The Last Hundred Years, But If We Want To Continue, Our Future Is In Space.

In This Way, Edwin Hubble Worked Out The Distances To Nine Different Galaxies. We Now Know That Our Galaxy Is Only One Of Some Hundred Thousand Million That Can Be Seen Using Modern Telescopes, Each Galaxy Itself Containing Some Hundred Thousand Million Stars.

Doing A Job Right The First Time Gets The Job Done. Doing The Job Wrong Fourteen Times Gives You Job Security.

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Why Do We Remember The Past, But Not The Future?

Then We Shall... Be Able To Take Part In The Discussion Of The Question Of Why It Is That We And The Universe Exist. If We Find The Answer To That, It Would Be The Ultimate Triumph Of Human Reason - For Then We Would Know The Mind Of God.

If There Is A God

We Only Have To Look At Ourselves To See How Intelligent Life Might Develop Into Something We Wouldnt Want To Meet. I Imagine They Might Exist In Massive Ships, Having Used Up All The Resources From Their Home Planet. Such Advanced Aliens Would Perhaps Become Nomads, Looking To Conquer And Colonize Whatever Planets They Can Reach.

Of Course It Is Possible That Ufo's Really Do Contain Aliens As Many People Believe, And The Government Is Hushing It Up

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.

One Does Not Have To Appeal To God To Set The Initial Conditions For The Creation Of The Universe, But If One Does He Would Have To Act Through The Laws Of Physics.

Go The Extra Mile. It Makes Your Boss Look Like An Incompetent Slacker.

I'm Not Afraid Of Death, But I'm In No Hurry To Die. I Have So Much I Want To Do First.

I'd Say I Don't Believe In God, But I'm Afraid He Might Hear Me.

In His Eyes Shone The Reflection Of The Most Beautiful Planet In The Universe---a Planet That Is Not Too Hot And Not Too Cold; That Has Liquid Water On The Surface And Where The Gravity Is Just Right For Human Beings And The Atmosphere Is Perfect For Them To Breathe; Where There Are Mountains And Deserts And Oceans And Islands And Forests And Trees And Birds And Plants And Animals And Insects And People---lots And Lots Of People. Where There Is Life. Some Of It, Possibly, Intelligent.

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?

Only Time - Whatever That May Be - Will Tell.

A Lot Of Prizes Have Been Awarded For Showing The Universe Is Not As Simple As We Might Have Thought.

If The Total Energy Of The Universe Must Always Remain Zero, And It Costs Energy To Create A Body, How Can A Whole Universe Be Created From Nothing?

One Could Say: "the Boundary Condition Of The Universe Is That It Has No Boundary." The Universe Would Be Completely Self-contained And Not Affected By Anything Outside Itself. It Would Neither Be Created Nor Destroyed. It Would Just Be.

The Laws Of Science Do Not Distinguish Between The Past And The Future.

[in The Universe It May Be That] Primitive Life Is Very Common And Intelligent Life Is Fairly Rare. Some Would Say It Has Yet To Occur On Earth.

I Want My Books Sold On Airport Bookstalls.

There Are Plenty Of Dead Scientists I Admire, But I Can't Think Of Any Living Ones. This Is Probably Because It Is Only In Retrospect That One Can See Who Made The Important Contributions.

Science Can Explain The Universe Without The Need For A Creator.

I Used To Think Information Was Destroyed In Black Hole. This Was My Biggest Blunder, Or At Least My Biggest Blunder In Science.

The "powers That Be" Are Not Smart Enough To Engineer Armageddon, But They May Yet Be Stupid Enough. If Governments Are Involved In Covering Up The Knowledge Of Aliens, Then They Are Doing A Much Better Job Of It Than They Seem To Do At Anything Else.

I Was Not A Good Student. I Did Not Spend Much Time At College; I Was Too Busy Enjoying Myself.

To Confine Our Attention To Terrestrial Matters Would Be To Limit The Human Spirit.

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.

Someone Told Me That Each Equation I Included In The Book Would Halve The Sales.

Half The Battle Is Just Showing Up.

Because There Is A Law Such As Gravity, The Universe Can And Will Create Itself From Nothing. Spontaneous Creation Is The Reason There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, Why The Universe Exists, Why We Exist. It Is Not Necessary To Invoke God To Light The Blue Touch Paper And Set The Universe Going.

It Was Recently Discovered That Research Causes Cancer In Rats.

For Millions Of Years, Mankind Lived Just Like The Animals. Then Something Happened Which Unleashed The Power Of Our Imagination. We Learned To Talk And We Learned To Listen.

We Explore Because We Are Human And We Want To Know. I Hope That Pluto Will Help Us On That Journey.

A Zero-gravity Flight Is A First Step Toward Space Travel.

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.

Theory Of Evolution

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.

We Could Call Order By The Name Of God, But It Would Be An Impersonal God. There's Not Much Personal About The Laws Of Physics.

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If At First You Don't Succeed, Try Management.

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Inspirational Office

Before We Understand Science, It Is Natural To Believe That God Created The Universe. But Now Science Offers A More Convincing Explanation.

Succeed In Spite Of Management.

It Should Soon Be Possible Dramatically To Increase The Intelligence And Life Span Of A Few Individuals. They And Their Offspring Could Become A Master Race. Evolution Pays No Regard To Social Justice. It Was Not Fair On The Neanderthals They Were Replaced By Modern Humans.

If The Government Is Covering Up Knowledge Of Aliens, They Are Doing A Better Job Of It Than They Do At Anything Else.

We Shouldn't Be Surprised That Conditions In The Universe Are Suitable For Life, But This Is Not Evidence That The Universe Was Designed To Allow For Life. We Could Call Order By The Name Of God, But It Would Be An Impersonal God. There's Not Much Personal About The Laws Of Physics.

I Don't Fear God- I Fear His Believers.

There Is Nothing Bigger Or Older Than The Universe.

Because Imaginary Time Behaves Like Another Direction In Space, Histories In Imaginary Time Can Be Closed Surfaces, Like The Surface Of The Earth, With No [existential] Beginning Or End.

I Do Not Believe In A Personal God.

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words...and Uses Up A Thousand Times The Memory.

Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

I Think Computer Viruses Should Count As Life.

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. Clearly, No Scientist Better Represents Those Advances Than Albert Einstein: Time's Person Of The Century.

It Is Generally Recognised That Women Are Better Than Men At Languages, Personal Relations And Multi-tasking, But Less Good At Map-reading And Spatial Awareness. It Is Therefore Not Unreasonable To Suppose That Women Might Be Less Good At Mathematics And Physics.

The Laws Of Science, As We Know Them At Present, Contain Many Fundamental Numbers, Like The Size Of The Electric Charge Of The Electron And The Ratio Of The Masses Of The Proton And The Electron .... The Remarkable Fact Is That The Values Of These Numbers Seem To Have Been Finely Adjusted To Make Possible The Development Of Life.

I Have Lived With The Prospect Of An Early Death For The Last 49 Years. I'm Not Afraid Of Death, But I'm In No Hurry To Die. I Have So Much I Want To Do First. I Regard The Brain As A Computer Which Will Stop Working When Its Components Fail. There Is No Heaven Or Afterlife For Broken Down Computers; That Is A Fairy Story For People Afraid Of The Dark.

If We Can Avoid Disaster For The Next Two Centuries, Our Species Should Be Safe As We Spread Into Space. If We Are The Only Intellegent Beings In The Galaxy We Should Make Sure We Survive And Continue. . . . Our Only Chance Of Long-term Survival Is Not To Remain Inward Looking On Planet Earth But To Spread Out Into Space. We Have Made Remarkable Progress In The Last Hundred Years. But If We Want To Continue Beyond The Next Hundred Years, Our Future Is In Space.

I Have To Speak Through A Computer... In My Mind, I Am Free. Free To Explore The Universe And Ask The Big Questions...

We Waste Time, So You Don't Have To.

Do You Ever Wonder How Much Deeper The Ocean Would Be Without Sponges?

I Think The Next Century Will Be The Century Of Complexity.

Nothing Is Fool-proof To A Sufficiently Talented Fool.

Disorder Increases With Time Because We Measure Time In The Direction In Which Disorder Increases.

I Don't Believe That The Ultimate Theory Will Come By Steady Work Along Existing Lines. We Need Something New. We Can't Predict What That Will Be Or When We Will Find It Because If We Knew That, We Would Have Found It Already!

There Is No Heaven Or Afterlife For Broken Down Computers; That Is A Fairy Story For People Afraid Of The Dark.

What I Have Learned From Life Is To Make The Most Of What You Have Got.

The Development Of Full Artificial Intelligence Could Spell The End Of The Human Race.

Being Confined To A Wheelchair Doesn't Bother Me As My Mind Is Free To Roam The Universe, But It Felt Wonderful To Be Weightless.

But A Machine That Was Powerful Enough To Accelerate Particles To The Grand Unification Energy Would Have To Be As Big As The Solar System - And Would Be Unlikely To Be Funded In The Present Economic Climate.

One Can Imagine That God Created The Universe At Literally Any Time In The Past. On The Other Hand, If The Universe Is Expanding, There May Be Physical Reasons Why There Had To Be A Beginning. One Could Imagine That God Created The Universe At The Instant Of The Big Bang, Or Even Afterwards In Just Such A Way As To Make It Look As Though There Had Been A Big Bang, But It Would Be Meaningless To Suppose That It Was Created Before The Big Bang. An Expanding Universe Does Not Preclude A Creator, But It Does Place Limits On When He Might Have Carried Out His Job!

Expanding Universe

One, Remember To Look Up At The Stars And Not Down At Your Feet. Two, Never Give Up Work. Work Gives You Meaning And Purpose And Life Is Empty Without It. Three, If You Are Lucky Enough To Find Love, Remember It Is There And Don't Throw It Away.

Any Physical Theory Is Always Provisional, In The Sense That It Is Only A Hypothesis: You Can Never Prove It. No Matter How Many Times The Results Of Experiments Agree With Some Theory, You Can Never Be Sure That The Next Time The Result Will Not Contradict The Theory.

Scientists Tend To Risk Theories They Admire

We Live In The Most Probable Of All Possible Worlds.

As Those Who Have Seen Jurassic Park Will Know, This Means A Tiny Disturbance In One Place, Can Cause A Major Change In Another. A Butterfly Flapping Its Wings Can Cause Rain In Central Park, New York. The Trouble Is, It Is Not Repeatable. The Next Time The Butterfly Flaps Its Wings, A Host Of Other Things Will Be Different, Which Will Also Influence The Weather. That Is Why Weather Forecasts Are So Unreliable.

I Think The Human Race Has No Future If It Doesn't Go Into Space.

What Could Define God, [is Thinking Of God] As The Embodiment Of The Laws Of Nature. However, This Is Not What Most People Would Think Of That God. They Made A Human-like Being With Whom One Can Have A Personal Relationship. When You Look At The Vast Size Of The Universe And How Insignificant An Accidental Human Life Is In It, That Seems Most Impossible.

Government Works Best Under The Glare Of Public Scrutiny. Absent Such Scrutiny, Abuses Occur.

The Initial Configuration Of The Universe May Have Been Chosen By God, Or It May Itself Have Been Determined By The Laws Of Science. In Either Case, It Would Seem That Everything In The Universe Would Then Be Determined By Evolution According To The Laws Of Science, So It Is Difficult To See How We Can Be Masters Of Our Fate.

My First Popular Book, 'a Brief History Of Time,' Aroused A Great Deal Of Interest, But Many Found It Difficult To Understand.

Life On Earth Is At The Ever-increasing Risk Of Being Wiped Out By A Disaster, Such As Sudden Global Warming, Nuclear War, A Genetically Engineered Virus Or Other Dangers. I Think The Human Race Has No Future If It Doesn't Go Into Space. I Therefore Want To Encourage Public Interest In Space.

It Is Very Important For Young People Keep Their Sense Of Wonder And Keep Asking Why.

I Believe In Universal Health Care. And I Am Not Afraid To Say So.

The Concern Here Is That Financial Services Become A Kind Of Tech-led Wild West.

Work Gives You Meaning And Purpose And Life Is Empty Without It.

Nothing Is Better Than Reading And Gaining More And More Knowledge.

Eternity Is A Long Time, Especially Towards The End.

The Meaning In Life Is Not Out There But Inbetween Our Ears. In Many Ways This Makes Us The Lords Of Creation.

Thirty Years Ago I Was Diagnosed With Motor Neurone Disease, And Given Two And A Half Years To Live. I Have Always Wondered How They Could Be So Precise About The Half.

I Think The Human Race Doesn't Have A Future If We Don't Go Into Space. We Need To Expand Our Horizons Beyond Planet Earth If We Are To Have A Long-term Future. We Cannot Remain Looking Inward At Ourselves On A Small And Increasingly Polluted And Overcrowded Planet. We Need To Look Outward To The Wider Universe.

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.

It Matters That You Don't Just Give Up.

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.

I Am Just A Child Who Has Never Grown Up. I Still Keep Asking These 'how' And 'why' Questions. Occasionally, I Find An Answer.

If It Were Only A Few Degrees, That Would Be Serious, But We Could Adapt To It. But The Danger Is The Warming Process Might Be Unstable And Run Away. We Could End Up Like Venus, Covered In Clouds And With The Surface Temperature Of 400 Degrees. It Could Be Too Late If We Wait Until The Bad Effects Of Warming Become Obvious. We Need Action Now To Reduce Emission Of Carbon Dioxide.

While There's Life, There Is Hope.

Sometimes I Wonder If I'm As Famous For My Wheelchair And Disabilities As I Am For My Discoveries.

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 Don't Think The Human Race Will Survive The Next Thousand Years, Unless We Spread Into Space.

The Idea Of 10 Dimensions Might Sound Exciting, But They Would Cause Real Problems If You Forget Where You Parked Your Car.

To Understand Recursion, One Must First Understand Recursion.

We Only Have To Look At Ourselves To See How Intelligent Life Might Develop Into Something We Wouldn't Want To Meet.

There Should Be No Boundaries To Human Endeavor. However Bad Life May Seem, There Is Always Hope.

Time Travel May Be Possible, But It Is Not Practical.

Philosophers Have Not Kept Up With Modern Developments In Science. Particularly Physics.

Working With My Father [stephen Hawking ] Is A Great Thrill - He Has The Amazing Ability To Hold Enormous Amounts Of Information In His Head.

"sooner Or Later Disasters Such As An Asteroid Collision Or A Nuclear War Could Wipe Us All Out, But Once We Spread Out Into Space And Establish Independent Colonies, Our Future Should Be Safe."

When I Was Young, Stephen Hawking Wasn't The World's Most Famous Physicist. The Fame Didn't Arrive Until The Publication Of "a Brief History Of Time," By Which Time I Was In My Late Teens. When I Was A Child, He Was Well Known Among Physicists, But They Are A Fairly Select, Serious Bunch, Not Much Given To Celebrity Idolizing.

Over A Very Small Number Of Rolls Of The Dice, The Uncertainty Principle Is Very Important.

Uncertainty Principle

Jesus Loves You, But Everyone Else Thinks You're An Ass.

The Human Race Does Not Have A Very Good Record Of Intelligent Behavior.

It's Clearly Possible For A Something To Acquire Higher Intelligence Than Its Ancestors: We Evolved To Be Smarter Than Our Ape-like Ancestors, And Einstein Was Smarter Than His Parents.

The Downside Of My Celebrity Is That I Cannot Go Anywhere In The World Without Being Recognized. It Is Not Enough For Me To Wear Dark Sunglasses And A Wig. The Wheelchair Gives Me Away.

What Was God Doing Before The Divine Creation? Was He Preparing Hell For People Who Asked Such Questions?

Only A Very Few Would Allow Creatures Like Us To Exist. Thus Our Presence Selects Out From This Vast Array Only Those Universes That Are Compatible With Our Existence. Although We Are Puny And Insignificant On The Scale Of The Cosmos, This Makes Us In A Sense The Lords Of Creation.

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.

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 Failing I Would Most Like To Correct Is Aggression. It May Have Had Survival Advantage In Caveman Days, To Get More Food, Territory Or A Partner With Whom To Reproduce, But Now It Threatens To Destroy Us All.

Observations Indicate That The Universe Is Expanding At An Ever Increasing Rate. It Will Expand Forever, Getting Emptier And Darker.

Science Is Beautiful When It Makes Simple Explanations Of Phenomena Or Connections Between Different Observations.

There Is A Real Danger That Computers Will Develop Intelligence And Take Over.

Galileo, Perhaps More Than Any Other Single Person, Was Responsible For The Birth Of Modern Science.

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?

Some Individuals Are Better Able Than Others To Draw The Right Conclusions About The World About Them And Act Accordingly. These Individuals Will Be More Likely To Survive And Reproduce So Their Pattern Of Behaviour And Thought Will Become Dominant

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