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The Usual Approach Of Science Of Constructing A Mathematical Model Cannot Answer The Questions Of Why There Should Be A Universe For The Model To Describe. Why Does The Universe Go To All The Bother Of Existing?

-Stephen Hawking

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The Usual Approach Of

Stephen Hawking

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The Usual Approach Of Science Of Constructing A Mathematical Model Cannot Answer The Questions Of Why There Should Be A Universe For The Model To Describe. Why Does The Universe Go To All The Bother Of Existing?

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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.

Maybe I'm Being A Bit Harsh On Philosophers, But They Have Not Been Very Kind To Me... I Have Been Variously Called Nominalist, An Instrumentalist, A Positivist, A Realist, And Several Other Ists. The Technique Seems Refutation By Denigration: If You Can Attach A Label To My Approach, You Don't Have To Say What Is Wrong With It... I Am Sure That Einstein, Heisenberg And Dirac Didn't Worry About Whether They Were Realists Or Instrumentalists.

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

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.

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

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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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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People Think I'm A Simpsons Character.

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It Was Recently Discovered That Research Causes Cancer In Rats.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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.

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Why Does The Universe Go To All The Bother Of Existing?

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

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The Radiation Left Over From The Big Bang Is The Same As That In Your Microwave Oven But Very Much Less Powerful. It Would Heat Your Pizza Only To Minus 271.3*c - Not Much Good For Defrosting The Pizza, Let Alone Cooking It.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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Although Quantum Mechanics Has Been Around For Nearly 70 Years, It Is Still Not Generally Understood Or Appreciated, Even By Those That Use It To Do Calculations.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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

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?

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?

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

Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

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.

Computers Double Their Performance Every Month.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Think The Next [21st] Century Will Be The Century Of Complexity. We Have Already Discovered The Basic Laws That Govern Matter And Understand All The Normal Situations. We Don't Know How The Laws Fit Together, And What Happens Under Extreme Conditions. But I Expect We Will Find A Complete Unified Theory Sometime This Century. The Is No Limit To The Complexity That We Can Build Using Those Basic Laws.

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.

Many People Do Not Like The Idea That Time Has A Beginning, Probably Because It Smacks Of Divine Intervention.

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

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

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.

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

Simplicity Is A Matter Of Taste

There Are No Black Holes - In The Sense Of Regimes From Which Light Can't Escape To Infinity. There Are However Apparent Horizons Which Persist For A Period Of Time.

Quiet People Have The Loudest Minds.

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

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

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

People Who Boast About Their I.q. Are Losers.

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

Science Will Win Because It Works.

We Won't Know For A Few Years.

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.

It Is My View That The Simplest Explanation Is There Is No God. No One Created The Universe And No One Directs Our Fate. This Leads Me To A Profound Realization. There Is Probably No Heaven, And No Afterlife Either. We Have This One Life To Appreciate The Grand Design Of The Universe, And For That, I Am Extremely Grateful.

We Live In The Most Probable Of All Possible Worlds.

There Is No Unique Picture Of Reality.

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Thus, In A Sense, We Are All Doomed. Even If We Stay Away From Black Holes

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

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

Computer Viruses Are Alive.

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.

One Should Love Animals. They Are So Tasty.

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.

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.

While There's Life, There Is Hope.

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.

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 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.

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

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 Like Physics, But I Love Cartoons.

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

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.

The Wise Never Marry, And When They Marry They Become Otherwise.

While Physics And Mathematics May Tell Us How The Universe Began, They Are Not Much Use In Predicting Human Behavior Because There Are Far Too Many Equations To Solve. I'm No Better Than Anyone Else At Understanding What Makes People Tick, Particularly Women.

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

Uncertainty Principle

Succeed In Spite Of Management.

I Do Not Believe In A Personal God.

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

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

Physically Disabled

However Difficult Life May Seem, There Is Always Something You Can Do And Succeed At.

Inspiring Movie

There Is Nothing Bigger Or Older Than The Universe.

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

One Cannot Really Argue With A Mathematical Theorem.

We Are Very, Very Small, But We Are Profoundly Capable Of Very, Very Big Things.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Unless Mankind Redesigns Itself By Changing Our Dna Through Altering Our Genetic Makeup, Computer-genera Ted Robots Will Take Over Our World.

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.

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