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Speech Has Allowed The Communication Of Ideas, Enabling Human Beings To Work Together To Build The Impossible. Mankind's Greatest Achievements Have Come About By Talking, And Its Greatest Failures By Not Talking. It Doesn't Have To Be Like This. Our Greatest Hopes Could Become Reality In The Future. With The Technology At Our Disposal, The Possibilities Are Unbounded. All We Need To Do Is Make Sure We Keep Talking.

-Stephen Hawking

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Speech Has Allowed The

Stephen Hawking

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Speech Has Allowed The Communication Of Ideas, Enabling Human Beings To Work Together To Build The Impossible. Mankind's Greatest Achievements Have Come About By Talking, And Its Greatest Failures By Not Talking. It Doesn't Have To Be Like This. Our Greatest Hopes Could Become Reality In The Future. With The Technology At Our Disposal, The Possibilities Are Unbounded. All We Need To Do Is Make Sure We Keep Talking.

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

All My Adult Life People Have Been Helping Me.

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.

Succeed In Spite Of Management.

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

[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.

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?

Plagiarism Saves Time.

We Each Exist For But A Short Time, And In That Time Explore But A Small Part Of The Whole Universe

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

The Human Race Shouldn't Have All Its Eggs In One Basket, Or On One Planet. Let's Hope We Can Avoid Dropping The Basket Until We Have Spread The Load.

People Think I'm A Simpsons Character.

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.

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

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.

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.

Speech Has Allowed The Communication Of Ideas, Enabling Human Beings To Work Together To Build The Impossible. Mankind's Greatest Achievements Have Come About By Talking, And Its Greatest Failures By Not Talking. It Doesn't Have To Be Like This. Our Greatest Hopes Could Become Reality In The Future. With The Technology At Our Disposal, The Possibilities Are Unbounded. All We Need To Do Is Make Sure We Keep Talking.

It Is Tribute To How Far We Have Come In Theoretical Physics That It Now Takes Enormous Machines And A Great Deal Of Money To Perform Experiments Whose Results We Can Not Predict.

Theoretical Physics

A Model Is A Good Model If First It Interprets A Wide Range Of Observations In Terms Of A Simple And Elegant Model, And Second If The Model Makes Definite Predictions That Can Be Tested, And Possibly Falsified, By Observation.

Religion Believes In Miracles, But These Aren't Compatible With Science.

Believe In Miracles

The Human Capacity For Guilt Is Such That People Can Always Find Ways To Blame Themselves

If Everything In The Universe Depends Upon Everything Else In A Fundamental Way, It Might Be Impossible To Get Close To A Full Solution By Investigating Parts Of The Problem In Isolation.

It Is Impossible To Imagine A Four-dimensional Space. I Personally Find It Hard Enough To Visualize A Three-dimensional Space!

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

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

I May Contradict Myself, But At Least I Don't Contradict Myself.

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.

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.

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

We've Created Life In Our Own Image.

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

Only Time - Whatever That May Be - Will Tell.

The Moment You Understand The Whole Universe, Is The Moment You Slightly Begin To Understand The Way God's Mind Works

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.

In The Last 200 Years The Population Of Our Planet Has Grown Exponentially, At A Rate Of 1.9% Per Year. If It Continued At This Rate, With The Population Doubling Every 40 Years, By 2600 We Would All Be Standing Literally Shoulder To Shoulder.

A Theory Is A Good Theory If It Satisfies Two Requirements: It Must Accurately Describe A Large Class Of Observations On The Basis Of A Model That Contains Only A Few Arbitrary Elements, And It Must Make Definite Predictions About The Results Of Future Observations.

While There's Life, There Is Hope.

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

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?

[on President Bush's Plan To Get To Mars In 10 Years] Stupid. Robots Would Do A Better Job And Be Much Cheaper Because You Don't Have To Bring Them Back.

To Understand Recursion, One Must First Understand Recursion.

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

With Genetic Engineering, We Will Be Able To Increase The Complexity Of Our Dna, And Improve The Human Race. But It Will Be A Slow Process, Because One Will Have To Wait About 18 Years To See The Effect Of Changes To The Genetic Code. By Contrast, Computers Double Their Speed And Memories Every 18 Months. 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.

Any Physical Theory Is Always Provisional, In The Sense That It Is Only A Hypothesis: You Can Never Prove It.

Just Like A Computer, We Must Remember Things In The Order In Which Entropy Increases. This Makes The Second Law Of Thermodynamics Almost Trivial. Disorder Increases With Time Because We Measure Time In The Direction In Which Disorder Increases. You Can't Have A Safer Bet Than That!

Whether You Want To Uncover The Secrets Of The Universe, Or You Just Want To Pursue A Career In The 21st Century, Basic Computer Programming Is An Essential Skill To Learn

Don't Be Disabled In Spirit As Well As Physically.

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

Think Of Our Dna. In The Last Million Years, Our Dna Hasn't Changed At All. It's Really Much The Same As It Was In The Jungle, A Million, Two Millions Years Ago. But In The Last 200 Years, Our Destructive Capacities Have Increased Many, Many Millions Of Times Over. Why Don't We See Intelligent Signals From Outer Space? Because In All Likelihood, Once The Civilization Reaches The Point Our Civilization Has Reached, It Destroys Itself.

If You Lined Up All The Cars In The World End To End, Someone Would Try To Pass Them.

Is God Omnipotent ? If He Is, Can He Create A Rock So Heavy He Can't Lift It ?

I Do Not Believe In A Personal God.

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.

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.

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.

Intelligence Is The Ability To Adapt To Change.

Every Man Should Marry. After All, Happiness Is Not The Only Thing In Life.

Money Is Not Everything. There's Master Card & Visa.

If It [the Universe] Was Expanding Fairly Slowly, The Force Of Gravity Would Cause It Eventually To Stop Expanding And Then To Start Contracting. However, If It Was Expanding At More Than A Certain Critical Rate, Gravity Would Never Be Strong Enough To Stop It, And The Universe Would Continue To Expand Forever.

The Past, Like The Future, Is Indefinite And Exists Only As A Spectrum Of Possibilities.

Future Possibilities

Everyone Can Enjoy A Life Of Luxurious Leisure If The Machine-produced Wealth Is Shared, Or Most People Can End Up Miserably Poor If The Machine-owners Successfully Lobby Against Wealth Redistribution.

It Is All Right To Make Mistakes; Nothing Is Perfect Because With Perfection, We Would Not Exist.

Once I Wept For I Had No Shoes. Then I Met A Man With No Feet, So I Took His Shoes. I Mean, It Wasn't As If He Was Going To Need Them.

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

The Rate Of Progress Is So Rapid That What One Learns At School Or University Is Always A Bit Out Of Date. Only A Few People Can Keep Up With The Rapidly Advancing Frontier Of Knowledge, And They Have To Devote Their Whole Time To It And Specialize In A Small Area. The Rest Of The Population Has Little Idea Of The Advances That Are Being Made Or The Excitement They Are Generating.

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

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

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

Hang In There, Retirement Is Only Thirty Years Away!

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.

One Big Contribution My Father [stephen Hawking] Has Made Is To Show That Having A Disability Does Not Bar You From Leading A Full And Eventful Life.

Please Join Me In Applauding The Esa - European Space Agency’s Historic Efforts With The Rosetta Mission And Landing A Spacecraft On Rotating Comet. It May Seem Like A Work Of Fiction, But It Is Very Real, Very Impressive, And Will Help Us To Further Uncover The Mysteries Surrounding The Formation Of The Solar System. They Made A Beautiful Short Film Using An Imaginary Landscape To Illustrate Today’s Historic Feat.

If I Had To Choose A Superhero To Be, I Would Pick Superman. He's Everything That I'm Not.

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

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.

Inspirational Office

I Don't Think The Human Race Will Survive The Next Thousand Years, Unless We Spread Into Space. There Are Too Many Accidents That Can Befall Life On A Single Planet. But I'm An Optimist. We Will Reach Out To The Stars.

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

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.

I Thought Eddie Redmayne Portrayed Me Very Well... At Times I Thought He Was Me.

One Is Always A Long Way From Solving A Problem Until One Actually Has The Answer.

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.

One Can See From Space How The Human Race Has Changed The Earth. Nearly All Of The Available Land Has Been Cleared Of Forest And Is Now Used For Agriculture Or Urban Development. The Polar Icecaps Are Shrinking And The Desert Areas Are Increasing. At Night, The Earth Is No Longer Dark, But Large Areas Are Lit Up. All Of This Is Evidence That Human Exploitation Of The Planet Is Reaching A Critical Limit. But Human Demands And Expectations Are Ever-increasing. We Cannot Continue To Pollute The Atmosphere, Poison The Ocean And Exhaust The Land. There Isn't Any More Available.

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

It [ai] Would Take Off On Its Own And Redesign Itself At An Ever Increasing Rate. Humans, Who Are Limited By Slow Biological Evolution, Couldn't Compete And Would Be Superseded.

[question: Do You Feel That Scientists Correct Themselves As Often As They Should?] More Often Than Politicians, But Not As Often As They Should.

You Cannot Predict The Future.

There Is No Prescribed Route To Follow To Arrive At A New Idea. You Have To Make The Intuitive Leap. But The Difference Is That Once You've Made The Intuitive Leap You Have To Justify It By Filling In The Intermediate Steps. N My Case, It Often Happens That I Have An Idea, But Then I Try To Fill In The Intermediate Steps And Find That They Don't Work, So I Have To Give It Up.

I Believe Things Cannot Make Themselves Impossible.

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.

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!

If We Ever Do Find A Complete Theory Of The Universe, It Would Be A Great Triumph Of Human Reason But It Wouldn't Leave Much For Us To Do. We Need An Intellectual Challenge.

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

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

I Have Experimental Evidence That Time Travel Is Not Possible.

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.

I'm Very Interested In Film Making. It's Telling A Story, Fiction Or Non-fiction. I Have Been Filmed Quite A Lot. Contrary To Popular Belief, Filming Isn't Glamorous. It Can Be Wearingly Repetitious, As The Same Shot Is Taken Over And Over Again.

I Want My Books Sold On Airport Bookstalls.

What Was God Doing Before The Divine Creation?

Nothing Cannot Exist Forever.

Computers Double Their Performance Every Month.

I Think Computer Viruses Should Count As Life.

Women. They Are A Complete Mystery.

So Einstein Was Wrong When He Said, "god Does Not Play Dice." Consideration Of Black Holes Suggests, Not Only That God Does Play Dice, But That He Sometimes Confuses Us By Throwing Them Where They Can't Be Seen.

There Are Grounds For Cautious Optimism That We May Now Be Near The End Ofthe Search For The Ultimate Laws Of Nature.

The Universe Does Not Behave According To Our Pre-conceived Ideas. It Continues To Surprise Us.

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

Latest Survey Shows That 3 Out Of 4 People Make Up 75% Of The World's Population.

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

The Human Race Is Just A Chemical Scum On A Moderate-sized Planet, Orbiting Around A Very Average Star In The Outer Suburb Of One Among A Hundred Billion Galaxies. We Are So Insignificant That I Can't Believe The Whole Universe Exists For Our Benefit. That Would Be Like Saying That You Would Disappear If I Closed My Eyes.

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

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.

The Question Is: Is The Way The Universe Began Chosen By God For Reasons We Can't Understand, Or Was It Determined By A Law Of Science? I Believe The Second. If You Like, You Can Call The Laws Of Science 'god', But It Wouldn't Be A Personal God That You Could Meet, And Ask Questions.

Creation Of The Universe

Why Are We Here? Where Do We Come From? Traditionally, These Are Questions For Philosophy, But Philosophy Is Dead.

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.

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.

Exploration By Real People Inspires Us.

There Is No Unique Picture Of Reality.

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

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.

It's The Gravity That Shapes The Large Scale Structure Of The Universe, Even Though It Is The Weakest Of Four Categories Of Forces

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

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.

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?

Observations Indicate That The Universe Is Expanding At An Ever-increasing Rate. It Will Expand Forever, Getting Emptier And Darker. Although The Universe Doesn’t Have An End, It Had A Beginning In The Big Bang. One Might Ask What Is Before That But The Answer Is That There Is Nowhere Before The Big Bang Just As There Is Nowhere South Of The South Pole.

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

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.

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.

Time Travel Was Once Considered Scientific Heresy, And I Used To Avoid Talking About It For Fear Of Being Labelled A 'crank.'

One Could Imagine Such Technology Outsmarting Financial Markets, Out-inventing Human Researchers, Out-manipulating Human Leaders, And Developing Weapons We Cannot Even Understand.

We Find Ourselves In A Bewildering World. We Want To Make Sense Of What We See Around Us And To Ask: What Is The Nature Of The Universe? What Is Our Place In It And Where Did It And We Come From? Why Is It The Way It Is?

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

Using E-mail, I Can Communicate With Scientists All Over The World.

The Lesson Of The Book Is That The Universe Is Governed By The Laws Of Science.

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.

Many People Find The Universe Confusing - It's Not.

Chaos, When Left Alone, Tends To Multiply.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

In A Brief History Of Time I Used The Word "god" Like Einstein Did As A Shorthand For The Laws Of Physics. However, This Is Not What Most People Mean By God, So I Have Decided Not To Use The Term. The Laws Of Physics Can Explain The Universe Without The Need For A God.

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

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

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

The Idea That We Are Alone In The Universe Seems To Me Completely Implausible And Arrogant, Considering The Number Of Planets And Stars That We Know Exist, It's Extremely Unlikely That We Are The Only Form Of Evolved Life.

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.

You Can't Regulate Every Lab In The World.

I Want To Know Why The Universe Exists, Why There Is Something Greater Than Nothing.

Theology Is Unnecessary.

Its A Crazy World Out There. Be Curious.

Although September 11 Was Horrible, It Didn't Threaten The Survival Of The Human Race, Like Nuclear Weapons Do.

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

If You Understand How The Universe Operates, You Control It In A Way.

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

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.

Among Physicists, I'm Respected I Hope.

Now, Radical Forward Thinking Is Offering Hope For The Future: Replacement Body Parts To Order. A Team Of Scientists In California Believe That If You Can Design Them On A Computer, You Should Be Able To Print Them Out.

Science Makes God Unnecessary.

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

Never Put Off The Work Till Tomorrow What You Can Put Off Today.

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

In A World That Is In Chaos Politically, Socially And Environmentally, How Can The Human Race Sustain Another 100 Years?

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

The Progress Of The Human Race In Understanding The Universe Has Established A Small Corner Of Order In An Increasingly Disordered Universe.

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

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.

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.

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

Science Is Not Only A Disciple Of Reason But, Also, One Of Romance And Passion.

Look Up At The Stars, Not Down At Your Feet.

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

We Should Seek The Greatest Value Of Our Action.

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.

I Would Like Nuclear Fusion To Become A Practical Power Source. It Would Provide An Inexhaustible Supply Of Energy, Without Pollution Or Global Warming.

No One Can Resist The Idea Of A Crippled Genius.

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.

Computer Viruses Are Alive.

Someone Told Me That Each Equation I Included In My Book Would Halve The Sales. I Did Put In One Equation, Einstein's Famous Equation, E = Mc Squared. I Hope That This Will Not Scare Off Half Of My Potential Readers.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Not Only That God Does Play Dice, But That He Sometimes Confuses Us By Throwing Them Where They Can't Be Seen.

The Thing About Smart People Is That They Seem Like Crazy People To Dumb People.

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

Always Complaining

So Long As The Universe Had A Beginning, We Could Suppose It Had A Creator. But If The Universe Is Really Completely Self-contained, It Would Have Neither Beginning Or End, It Would Simply Be. What Place Then For A Creator?

At Times, I Get Very Lonely Because People Are Afraid To Talk To Me Or Don't Wait For Me To Write A Response. I'm Shy And Tongue-tied At Times. I Find It Difficult To Talk To People Who I Don't Know.

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.

More Often Than Politicians, But Not As Often As They Should.

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.

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

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

We Are Entering An Increasingly Dangerous Period Of Our History. But I'm An Optimist.

It Matters If You Don't Just Give Up.

Gravity Is So Strong That Space Is Bent Round Onto Itself, Making It Rather Like The Surface Of The Earth. If One Keeps Traveling In A Certain Direction On The Surface Of The Earth, One Never Comes Up Against An Impassable Barrier Or Falls Over The Edge, But Eventually Comes Back To Where One Started.

"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."

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

I Like Physics, But I Love Cartoons.

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