Stephen Hawking Quotes

It is generally recognized that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multitasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics. It is not politically correct to say such things....But it cannot be denied that there are differences between men and women. Of course, these are differences between the averages only. There are wide variations about the mean.

[...] Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

in 1992 came the first confirmed observation of a planet orbiting a star other than our sun.

No boundary condition: The idea that the universe is finite but has no boundary (in imaginary time).

Black holes might be useful for getting rid of garbage or even some of one's friends.

If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?

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.

The message of this lecture is that black holes ain’t as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once though…things can get out of a black hole both on 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.

there are lots of things you want to do before your life is over.

مردم دیدگاهی متناقض نسبت به علم دارند، آنان از یکسو انتظار دارند استانداردهای زندگی‌شان براثر پیشرفت‌های دانش و فن بالا رود، اما از سوی دیگر به دانش و علم بی‌اعتمادند چراکه از درک آن عاجزند.

The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves.

If so, we might be able to use them for rapid travel around the galaxy or travel back in time. Of course, we have not seen anyone from the future (or have we?) but I discuss a possible explanation for this.

Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end.

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. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.