I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was able to reason.
- Stephen Hawking
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.
- Stephen Hawking
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
- Stephen Hawking
Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.
- Stephen Hawking
Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.
- Stephen Hawking
The life we have on Earth must have spontaneously generated itself. It must therefore be possible for life to exist spontaneously elsewhere in the universe.
- Stephen Hawking
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
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.
- Stephen Hawking
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
I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.
- Stephen Hawking
My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.
- Stephen Hawking
To show this diagram properly, I would really need a four dimensional screen. However, because of government cuts, we could manage to provide only a two dimensional screen.
- Stephen Hawking
Maybe that is our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities.The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability.
- Stephen Hawking
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
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
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
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
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!
- Stephen Hawking
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
- Stephen Hawking
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
