Background Image

...

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.

-Stephen Hawking

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Question Is: Is

Stephen Hawking

...

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.

Views: 4

Topic

Creation Of The Universe

More From Stephen Hawking

Life Would Be Tragic If It Weren't Funny.

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.

Maybe My Variety Is Due To Bad Absorption Of Vitamins.

Keeping An Active Mind Has Been Vital To My Survival, As Has Been Maintaining A Sense Of Humor.

I Have Experimental Evidence That Time Travel Is Not Possible.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

Not To Leave Planet Earth Would Be Like Castaways On A Desert Island Not Trying To Escape...sending Humans To Other Planets ... Will Shape The Future Of The Human Race In Ways We Don't Yet Understand, And May Determine Whether We Have Any Future 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.

If You Are Lucky Enough To Find Love, Remember It Is There And Don't Throw It Away.

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!

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

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

There Is A Very Real Danger That We Will Kill Everything On This Planet Now That We Have The Technological Power To Do So.

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.

The Doctor Who Diagnosed Me With Als, Or Motor Neuron Disease, Told Me That It Would Kill Me In Two Or Three Years.

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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 Believe Human Begins Have Existed For Only A Small Fraction Of Cosmic History, Because Human Race Has Been Improving So Rapidly In Knowledge And Technology That If People Had Been Around For Millions Of Years, The Human Race Would Be Much Further Along In It's Mastery.

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.

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

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

Theology Is Unnecessary.

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

[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.

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

All My Adult Life People Have Been Helping Me.

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

Exploration By Real People Inspires Us.

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

If One Is Physically Disabled, One Cannot Afford To Be Psychologically Disabled As Well.

Physically Disabled

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

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.

[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.

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

You May See A Cup Of Tea Fall Off A Table And Break Into Pieces On The Floor... But You Will Never See The Cup Gather Itself Back Together And Jump Back On The Table. The Increase Of Disorder, Or Entropy, Is What Distinguishes The Past From The Future, Giving A Direction To Time.

So When People Ask Me If I Believe God Created The Universe, I Tell Them That The Question Itself Makes No Sense. Time Didn't Exist Before The Big Bang, So There Is No Time For God To Make The Universe In. It's Like Asking For Directions To The Edge Of The Earth; The Earth Is A Sphere, It Doesn't Have An Edge, So Looking For It Is A Futile Exercise.

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.

People Think I'm A Simpsons Character.

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before

If The Rate Of Expansion One Second After The Big Bang Had Been Smaller By Even One Part In A Hundred Thousand Million Million, It Would Have Recollapsed Before It Reached Its Present Size. On The Other Hand, If It Had Been Greater By A Part In A Million, The Universe Would Have Expanded Too Rapidly For Stars And Planets To Form.

Nothing Cannot Exist Forever.

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.

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

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.

Because There Is A Law Such As Gravity, The Universe Can And Will Create Itself From Nothing.

Creation Of The Universe

Without Imperfection, You Or I Would Not Exist.

I've Noticed That Even People Who Believe In Fate Look Both Ways Before Crossing The Street.

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.

No One Can Resist The Idea Of A Crippled Genius.

I Don't Want To Write An Autobiography Because I Would Become Public Property With No Privacy Left.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

To Understand Recursion, One Must First Understand Recursion.

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

When I Get To Heaven I'm Gonna Find The Guy In Charge Of The Weather And Kick His Rear.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

It Matters If You Don't Just Give Up.

All That My Work Has Shown Is That You Don't Have To Say That The Way The Universe Began Was The Personal Whim Of God.

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

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

We Should Seek The Greatest Value Of Our Action.

You Cannot Predict The Future.

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.

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.

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

What Lies North Of The North Pole?

The Intelligent Beings In These Regions Should Therefore Not Be Surprised If They Observe That Their Locality In The Universe Satisfies The Conditions That Are Necessary For Their Existence. It Is A Bit Like A Rich Person Living In A Wealthy Neighborhood Not Seeing Any Poverty.

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.

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.

The Simpsons Is The Best Thing On American Television.

American Television

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Future Possibilities

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.

It Was Recently Discovered That Research Causes Cancer In Rats.

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

Eternity Is A Long Time, Especially Towards The End.

Bodies Like The Earth Are Not Made To Move On Curved Orbits By A Force Called Gravity; Instead, They Follow The Nearest Thing To A Straight Path In A Curved Space, Which Is Called A Geodesic. A Geodesic Is The Shortest (or Longest) Path Between Two Nearby Points.

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.

I Am Damned If I'm Going To Die Before I Have Unraveled More Of The Universe

Science Makes God Unnecessary.

Our Only Chance Of Long-term Survival Is Not To Remain Lurking On Planet Earth, But To Spread Out Into Space.

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

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.

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.

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

I Do Not Believe In A Personal God.

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

Equations Are Just The Boring Part Of Mathematics. I Attempt To See Things In Terms Of Geometry.

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

I Believe Things Cannot Make Themselves Impossible.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

We've Created Life In Our Own Image.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I Like Physics, But I Love Cartoons.

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.

Do You Believe In First Love - Or Should I Pass By Again?

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.

It Is Reasonable To Ask Who Or What Created The Universe, But If The Answer Is God, Then The Question Has Merely Been Deflected To That Of Who Created God.

There Are Too Many Accidents That Can Befall Life On A Single Planet.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

What You Have Told Us Is Rubbish. The World Is Really A Flat Plate Supported On The Back Of A Giant Tortoise.

Issuing An Insurance Policy Against Abduction By Aliens Seems A Pretty Safe Bet.

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.

Humanities Deepest Desire For Knowledge Is Justification Enough For Continuing Our Quest. And Our Goal Is Nothing Less Than A Complete Description Of The Universe We Live In.

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.

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

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

To My Mathematical Brain, The Numbers Alone Make Thinking About Aliens Perfectly Rational.

If What We Regard As Real Depends On Our Theory, How Can We Make Reality The Basis Of Our Philosophy? But We Cannot Distinguish What Is Real About The Universe Without A Theory. It Makes No Sense To Ask If It Corresponds To Reality, Because We Do Not Know What Reality Is Independent Of A Theory.

The Boundary Condition Of The Universe Is That It Has No Boundary.

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

Always Complaining

Succeed In Spite Of Management.

Plagiarism Saves Time.

Although I Cannot Move, And I Have To Speak Through A Computer, In My Mind, I Am Free.

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.

Quiet People Have The Loudest Minds.

Maybe I Don't Have The Most Common Kind Of Motor Neuron Disease, Which Usually Kills In Two Or Three Years.

It Often Happens That I Have An Idea, But Then I Try To Fill In The Intermediate Steps And Find They Don't Work, So I Have To Give It Up.

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.

I Would Rather Be Right Than Rigorous.

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

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.

Inspirational Office

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

I Believe In The Possible. I Believe, Small Though We Are, Insignificant Though We May Be, We Can Reach A Full Understanding Of The Universe. You Were Right When You Said You Felt Small, Looking Up At All That Up There. We Are Very, Very Small, But We Are Profoundly Capable Of Very, Very Big Things.

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

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.

I Have Sold More Books On Physics Than Madonna Has On Sex.

We Think We Have Solved The Mystery Of Creation. Maybe We Should Patent The Universe And Charge Everyone Royalties For Their Existence.

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. But Our Genetic Code Still Carries The Selfish And Aggressive Instincts That Were Of Survival Advantage In The Past. It Will Be Difficult Enough To Avoid Disaster In The Next Hundred Years, Let Alone The Next Thousand Or Million. Our Only Chance Of Long Term Survival, Is Not To Remain Inward Looking On Planet Earth, But To Spread Out Into Space.

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.

While There's Life, There Is Hope.

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

What I Meant By 'we Would Know The Mind Of God' Is, We Would Know Everything That God Would Know, If There Were A God. Which There Isn't. I'm An Atheist.

It Matters That You Don't Just Give Up.

We See The Universe The Way It Is Because We Exist.

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

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

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

Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

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.

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

One Of The Basic Rules Of The Universe Is That Nothing Is Perfect. Perfection Simply Doesn't Exist.....without Imperfection, Neither You Nor I Would Exist

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

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

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

The Victim Should Have The Right To End His Life, If He Wants. But I Think It Would Be A Great Mistake. However Bad Life May Seem, There Is Always Something You Can Do, And Succeed At. While There's Life, There Is Hope.

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

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

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.

Simplicity Is A Matter Of Taste

Children In Backseats Cause Accidents. Accidents In Backseats Cause Children.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

Trending Author

Category