Stephen Hawking Quotes about Science

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.

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.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol.

What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

So long as the Universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the Universe is really completely self-contained, it would have neither beginning or end, it would simply be. What place then for a creator?

We live in the most probable of all possible worlds.

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.

Not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.

I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on philosophers, but they have not been very kind to me... I have been variously called nominalist, an instrumentalist, a positivist, a realist, and several other ists. The technique seems refutation by denigration: If you can attach a label to my approach, you don't have to say what is wrong with it... I am sure that Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac didn't worry about whether they were realists or instrumentalists.

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

I would rather be right than rigorous.

There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you ever meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.

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

Real science can be far stranger than science fiction and much more satisfying.

[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.

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.

God not only plays dice, he throws them in the corner where you can't see them.

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist.

A lot of prizes have been awarded for showing the universe is not as simple as we might have thought.