Stephen Hawking Quotes - Page 8

If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size. On the other hand, if it had been greater by a part in a million, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for stars and planets to form.

It's clearly possible for a something to acquire higher intelligence than its ancestors: we evolved to be smarter than our ape-like ancestors, and Einstein was smarter than his parents.

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

Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.

If you understand how the universe operates, you control it in a way.

With genetic engineering, we will be able to increase the complexity of our DNA, and improve the human race. But it will be a slow process, because one will have to wait about 18 years to see the effect of changes to the genetic code.

Religion believes in miracles, but these aren't compatible with science.

It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.

Because imaginary time behaves like another direction in space, histories in imaginary time can be closed surfaces, like the surface of the Earth, with no [existential] beginning or end.

You cannot understand the glories of the universe without believing there is some Supreme Power behind it.

It is impossible to imagine a four-dimensional space. I personally find it hard enough to visualize a three-dimensional space!

It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

We think we have solved the mystery of creation. Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence.

A model is a good model if first it interprets a wide range of observations in terms of a simple and elegant model, and second if the model makes definite predictions that can be tested, and possibly falsified, by observation.

Why do we remember the past, but not the future?

The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron .... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.

There are plenty of dead scientists I admire, but I can't think of any living ones. This is probably because it is only in retrospect that one can see who made the important contributions.

I’m the archetype of a disabled genius, or should I say a physically challenged genius, to be politically correct. At least I’m obviously physically challenged. Whether I’m a genius is more open to doubt.

I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science. It has no beginning and no end.

It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, 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.

A picture is worth a thousand words...and uses up a thousand times the memory.

If you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.

Thirty years ago I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, and given two and a half years to live. I have always wondered how they could be so precise about the half.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

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?