Top 532 Quotes & Sayings by Stephen Hawking - Page 9

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.

Chaos, when left alone, tends to multiply.

I put a lot of effort into writing 'A Briefer History' at a time when I was critically ill with pneumonia because I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.

If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist.

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.

A million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe.

I do not believe in a personal God.

We explore because we are human and we want to know. I hope that Pluto will help us on that journey.

If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would try to pass them.

If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered.

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.

It is said that there's no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe is the ultimate free lunch.

Working with my father [Stephen Hawking ] is a great thrill - he has the amazing ability to hold enormous amounts of information in his head.

More often than politicians, but not as often as they should.

What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.

To boldly go where no one has gone before

We see the universe the way it is because we exist.

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.

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 wouldnt be here today if it were not for the NHS, I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.

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 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!

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.

Children in backseats cause accidents. Accidents in backseats cause children.

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.

"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."

The progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe.

I thought Eddie Redmayne portrayed me very well... At times I thought he was me.

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.

The concern here is that financial services become a kind of tech-led Wild West.

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.

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.

The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

We are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. But I'm an optimist.

Science could predict that the universe must have had a beginning.

Scientists tend to risk theories they admire

Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.

[Question: Do you feel that scientists correct themselves as often as they should?] More often than politicians, but not as often as they should.

When two's company, three's the result!

The human race does not have a very good record of intelligent behavior.

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.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over.

[Question: What do you think was the most important physics idea to emerge this year?] We won't know for a few years.

Science makes God unnecessary.

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.

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.

thus, in a sense, we are all doomed. even if we stay away from black holes

Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end.

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.

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.

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.