Stephen Hawking Quotes

We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars. We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its center about once every hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary, average-sized, yellow star, near the outer edge of one of the spiral arms.

Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behaviour is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord it over every aspect of human life.

Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.

When you're faced with the possibility of an early death, it makes you realize that life is worth living and there are a lots of things you want to do.

We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars.

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

Cuando miramos al universo, lo vemos tal como fue en el pasado

Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases.

I think that when we die we return to dust. But there’s a sense in which we live on, in our influence, and in our genes that we pass on to our children. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.

However, one cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.

The discovery that the universe was expanding was one of the great intellectual revolutions of the twentieth century.

I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death!

Both observer and observed are parts of the world that has an objective existence, and any distinction between them has no meaningful significance. In other words, if you see a herd of zebras fighting for a spot in the parking garage, it is because there really is a herd of zebras fighting for a spot in the parking garage.