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Stephen Hawking

92 quotes

“The subject of this book is the structure of space-time on length-scales from 10-13cm, the radius of an elementary particle, up to 1028cm, the radius of the universe. ...we base our treatment on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: with G.F.R. Ellis, "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time" (1973) Preface
“I regard [the many worlds interpretation] as self-evidently correct. [T.F.: Yet some don't find it evident to themselves.] Yeah, well, there are some people who spend an awful lot of time talking about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. My attitude — I would paraphrase Goering—is that when I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a conversation with Timothy Ferris (4 April 1983), as quoted in The Whole Shebang (1998) by Timothy Ferris, p. 345
“Many people would claim that the boundary conditions are not part of physics but belong to metaphysics or religion. They would claim that nature had complete freedom to start the universe off any way it wanted. That may be so, but it could also have made it evolve in a completely arbitrary and random manner. Yet all the evidence is that it evolves in a regular way according to certain laws. It would therefore seem reasonable to suppose that there are also laws governing the boundary conditions.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Quantum State of the Universe", Nuclear Physics (1984)
“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Stephen Hawking's Universe (1985) by John Boslough, Ch. 7 : The Final Question, p. 77
“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?”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. p. 444
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Der Spiegel (17 October 1988)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Der Spiegel (17 October 1988)
“On seeing the Enterprise's warp engine while visiting the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation (where he would briefly play himself in the 1993 episode Descent, Part I), Hawking smiled and said: I'm working on that.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in The Star Trek Encyclopedia (1999) by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda, p. 185
“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. 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 (1942–2018) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin' (2014)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: During the same 1994 exchange with Penrose as the previous quote, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 26 and also in "The Nature of Space and Time" (online text)
“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! It could come in the next 20 years, but we might never find it.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science Watch (September 1994)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Ken Campbell on Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken (1995)
“I think computer viruses should count as life … I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Macworld Expo in Boston, as quoted in The Daily News (4 August 1994). A nearly identical quote can be found at the end of the second paragraph of his lecture Life in the Universe (1996).
“It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From the lecture (1996)
“Einstein was confused, not the quantum theory.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture at the Amsterdam Symposium on Gravity, Black Holes, and String Theory (21 June 1997)
“All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From the 1997 television program Stephen Hawking's Universe
“Thus it seems that even God is bound by the uncertainty principle, and can not know both the position, and the speed, of a particle. So God does play dice with the universe. All the evidence points to him being an inveterate gambler, who throws the dice on every possible occasion.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture "Does God Play Dice", 1999, hawking.org.uk
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Hawking's article A Brief History of Relativity, in Time magazine (31 December 1999)
“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?”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), p. 59
“Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview "Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking" by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking" by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001).
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in "Leaping the Abyss" (April 2002) by Gregory Benford, in Reason Magazine
“[on the possibility of contact with an alien civilization]: I think it 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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Appearance in the National Geographic Channel program Naked Science: Alien Contact, as quoted in The New York Times (24 November 2004) and a CNN transcript of an interview with Seth Shostak from Anderson Cooper 360 (26 …
“I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Response upon being questioned as to his IQ, in interview with Deborah Solomon "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)
“Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)
“I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an appearance in the Discovery Channel program Alien Planet (14 May 2005)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005)
“I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005)
“Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Stephen Hawking: A Biography (2005) by Kristine Larsen, p. 43
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On voluntary euthanasia as quoted in People's Daily Online (14 June 2006)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview on Israeli television, as quoted in "Happy 65th Birthday to Prof. Stephen Hawking!" at StarTrek.com (8 January 2007)
“I'm not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in "Stephen Hawking prepares for weightless flight", New Scientist (26 April 2007)
“The zero-G part was wonderful and the higher-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come!”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: After completing a zero-gravity flight in a specially modified plane, as quoted in "Hawking takes zero-gravity flight" BBC News (27 April 2007)
“In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Open question, posted to the Internet, as quoted in The Guardian, and "Watching the World" in Awake! magazine (June 2007); a month after posting the question he explained: I don’t know the answer. That is why I asked th…
“To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword to The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Krauss (2007), p. xiii
“I imagine what happens to human consciousness when we die is much like turning off a computer. I don’t believe in a heaven for computers. I think the after-life is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Answering a question by Pik Botha about the fate of human consciousness at death, 50/50 (7 July 2008)
“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Diane Sawyer, as quoted in "Stephen Hawking on Religion: 'Science Will Win'" on ABC World News (7 June 2010)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'" by Ian Sample, in The Guardian (15 May 2011)
“The Dreams that Stuff is Made of”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Title of a collection, by Hawking, of the most significant papers in Quantum mechanics: The Dreams That Stuff Is Made of : The Most Astounding Papers of Quantum Physics and How They Shook the Scientific World (2011)
“We should seek the greatest value of our action.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Response to a question on how we should live, in an interview with The Guardian (15 May 2011)
“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.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with The Guardian (15 May 2011)
“I used to think that information was destroyed in black holes. But the AdS/CFT correspondence led me to change my mind. This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stephen Hawking at 70: Exclusive interview" in New Scientist, (4 January 2012). In his comment that he "used to think that information was destroyed in black holes", he is referring to the black hole information paradox.
“Women. They are a complete mystery.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Response when asked what he thinks about most during the day, "Stephen Hawking at 70: Exclusive interview" in New Scientist (4 January 2012)
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: BBC (2 December 2014)
“Black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside, and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reith Lecture 2 : Black holes ain’t as black as they are painted (2015) · BBC Radio 4 audio file
“If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. 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. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Science AMA Series: Stephen Hawking AMA Answers!", reddit.com (8 October 2015); also quoted in "Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots" Huffington Post (8 October 2015)
“Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E = mc^2. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source