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The Rate Of Progress Is So Rapid That What One Learns At School Or University Is Always A Bit Out Of Date.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.

-Stephen Hawking

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The Rate Of Progress

Stephen Hawking

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The Rate Of Progress Is So Rapid That What One Learns At School Or University Is Always A Bit Out Of Date.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.

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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.

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.

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

One Can't Predict The Weather More Than A Few Days In Advance.

You Cannot Predict The Future.

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.

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Not To Take This Web Of Dualities As A Sign We Are On The Right Track Would Be A Bit Like Believing That God Put Fossils Into The Rocks In Order To Mislead Darwin About The Evolution Of Life.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 Don't Fear God- I Fear His Believers.

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

[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.

Hang In There, Retirement Is Only Thirty Years Away!

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.

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

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.

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

Life Would Be Tragic If It Weren't Funny.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Believe That The Long-term Future Of The Human Race Must Be Space And That It Represents An Important Life Insurance For Our Future Survival, As It Could Prevent The Disappearance Of Humanity By Colonizing Other Planets.

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

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

In Britain, Like Most Of The Developed World, Stem-cell Research Is Regarded As A Great Opportunity. America Will Be Left Behind If It Doesn't Change Policy.

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

Theology Is Unnecessary.

Everything That Civilisation Has To Offer Is A Product Of Human Intelligence; We Cannot Predict What We Might Achieve When This Intelligence Is Magnified By The Tools That Ai May Provide, But The Eradication Of War, Disease, And Poverty Would Be High On Anyone's List. Success In Creating Ai Would Be The Biggest Event In Human History. Unfortunately, It Might Also Be The Last.

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

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

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.

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.

It Surprises Me How Disinterested We Are Today About Things Like Physics, Space, The Universe And Philosophy Of Our Existence, Our Purpose, Our Final Destination. Its A Crazy World Out There. Be Curious.

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 Think The Next Century Will Be The Century Of Complexity.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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It Would Be Very Difficult To Explain Why The Universe Should Have Begun In Just This Way, Except As The Act Of A God Who Intended To Create Beings Like Us.

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

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

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

Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

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

Among Physicists, I'm Respected I Hope.

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

Love The Neighbor. But Don't Get Caught.

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

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

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I’m The Archetype Of A Disabled Genius, Or Should I Say A Physically Challenged Genius, To Be Politically Correct. At Least I’m Obviously Physically Challenged. Whether I’m A Genius Is More Open To Doubt.

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 Do Not Believe In A Personal God.

Plagiarism Saves Time.

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Maybe My Variety Is Due To Bad Absorption Of Vitamins.

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Take A Coffee Break.

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

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Eternity Is A Long Time, Especially Towards The End.

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

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

God Abhors A Naked Singularity.

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

Real Science Can Be Far Stranger Than Science Fiction And Much More Satisfying.

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Ever Since The Dawn Of Civilization, People Have Not Been Content To See Events As Unconnected And Inexplicable. They Have Craved An Understanding Of The Underlying Order In The World. Today We Still Yearn To Know Why We Are Here And Where We Came From. Humanity's Deepest Desire For Knowledge Is Justification Enough For Our Continuing Quest. And Our Goal Is Nothing Less Than A Complete Description Of The Universe We Live In.

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

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

I Think The Brain Is Essentially A Computer And Consciousness Is Like A Computer Program. It Will Cease To Run When The Computer Is Turned Off. Theoretically, It Could Be Re-created On A Neural Network, But That Would Be Very Difficult, As It Would Require All One's Memories.

I Would Rather Be Right Than Rigorous.

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.

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

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.

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

Chaos, When Left Alone, Tends To Multiply.

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 Fact That No One Understands You Doesn't Mean You're An Artist.

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.

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

I Like Physics, But I Love Cartoons.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

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

It Matters If You Don't Just Give Up.

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

A Person Who Smiles In The Face Of Adversity...probably Has A Scapegoat.

Inspirational Office

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Always Complaining

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

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 Have Sold More Books On Physics Than Madonna Has On Sex. [hawking Adopted This Statement From A Remark Made To Him By His Former Post-doc, Nathan Myhrvold.]

Nothing Cannot Exist Forever.

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

Science Could Predict That The Universe Must Have Had A Beginning.

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.

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

I Don't Know What My Iq Is. People Who Gloat About Their Iq's Are Losers

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

What Lies North Of The North Pole?

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

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

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.

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.

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

If I Knew What Was Going To Happen In Ten Years I Would Do It Now. I Just Follow My Nose.

The Whole History Of Science Has Been The Gradual Realization That Events Do Not Happen In An Arbitrary Manner, But That They Reflect A Certain Underlying Order, Which May Or May Not Be Divinely Inspired.

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

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

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.

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.

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

While There's Life, There Is Hope.

There Is Nothing Bigger Or Older Than The Universe.

Simplicity Is A Matter Of Taste

Only Time - Whatever That May Be - Will Tell.

Scientists Have Become The Bearers Of The Torch Of Discovery In Our Quest For Knowledge.

It Matters That You Don't Just Give Up.

Half The Battle Is Just Showing Up.

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