Stephen Hawking Quotes

The Greeks even had a third argument that the earth must be round, for why else does one first see the sails of a ship coming over the horizon, and only later see the hull?

It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.

This picture of a hot early stage of the universe was first put forward by the scientist George Gamow in a famous paper written in 1948 with a student of his, Ralph Alpher. Gamow had quite a sense of humor — he persuaded the nuclear scientist Hans Bethe to add his name to the paper to make the list of authors “Alpher, Bethe, Gamow,

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.

black holes are not really black after all: they glow like a hot body, and the smaller they are, the more they glow.

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. — ALBERT EINSTEIN

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed. If you like, you can say the laws are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence.

The Steady State theory was what Karl Popper would call a good scientific theory: it made definite predictions, which could be tested by observation, and possibly falsified. Unfortunately for the theory, they were falsified.

You cannot predict the future.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

The universe would have expanded in a smooth way from a single point. As it expanded, it would have borrowed energy from the gravitational field, to create matter. As any economist could have predicted, the result of all that borrowing, was inflation. The universe expanded and borrowed at an ever-increasing rate. Fortunately, the debt of gravitational energy will not have to be repaid until the end of the universe.

"Stephen Hawking said that his quest is simply "trying to understand the mind of God"."

"My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."

[The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]

do we really have reason to believe that an objective reality exists?