Hawking Quotes & Sayings

Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. — Mary McCarthy

In 1992 came the first confirmed observation of a planet orbiting a star other than our sun. — Stephen Hawking

From bigots who hawk their god
door-to-door, preserve us. — A.J. Beirens

(The story that Newton was inspired by an apple hitting his head is almost certainly apocryphal. All Newton himself ever said was that the idea of gravity came to him as he sat "in a contemplative mood" and "was occasioned by the fall of an apple.") — Stephen Hawking

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

There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end ofthe search for the ultimate laws of nature. — Stephen Hawking

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves. — Stephen Hawking

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. — Stephen Hawking

Every man must be like Stephen Hawking. His body is here on earth, but his mind walks in the universe! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Einstein never accepted that the universe was governed by chance; — Stephen Hawking

There was a young lady of Wight Who travelled much faster than light. She departed one day, In a relative way, And arrived on the previous night. The point is that the theory of relativity says that there is no unique measure of time that all observers will agree on. — Stephen Hawking

I'm never any good in the morning. It is only after four in the afternoon that I get going. — Stephen Hawking

It is all right to make mistakes; nothing is perfect because with perfection, we would not exist. — Stephen Hawking

But a machine that was powerful enough to accelerate particles to the grand unification energy would have to be as big as the Solar System - and would be unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate. — Stephen Hawking

Calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Change those rules of our universe just a bit, and the conditions for our existence disappear! — Stephen Hawking

One should love animals. They are so tasty. — Stephen Hawking

If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do. — Stephen Hawking

We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics. — Stephen Hawking

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. — Stephen Hawking

I never thought I would become amazing. I never thought I would be as great as my father. I would like to continue writing novels, and hopefully, at some point, I would like to make the switch from being 'Stephen Hawking's daughter' to 'novelist Lucy Hawking,' and that will be a fabulous day. — Lucy Hawking

When something is made idiot proof, they will just make better idiots. — Stephen Hawking

I think the discovery of supersymmetric partners for the known particles would revolutionize our understanding of the universe. — Stephen Hawking

Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair ... I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ [as] crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair ... The crowds had streamed after Einstein [on Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922] as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later ... They showed exquisite choice in their heroes ... Somehow they understood that Einstein and Hawking were not just great scientists, but great human beings. — Freeman Dyson

If a star were a grain of salt, you could fit all the stars visible to the naked eye on a teaspoon, but all the stars in the universe would fill a ball more than eight miles wide. — Stephen Hawking

Maybe my viriety is due to bad absorption of vitamins. — Stephen Hawking

The hunt for spouses is an activity on a par with fox-hunting or hawking, though the weapons and dramatis personae differ. Just as grizzled old men know the habits of hares and quail, so do elegant society gossips know every titbit about the year's eligible men and women. — Marie Brennan

Many scientists (the most notable being Albert Einstein) think in visual, spatial, and physical images rather than in mathematical terms and words. (N.B.: That the theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, used an arboreal term to picture the cosmos [i.e., affirming that the universe "could have different branches,"] is a tribute to his [very visual] primate brain.) — David B. Givens

I want my books sold on airport bookstalls. — Stephen Hawking

The dragonfly is an exceptionally beautiful insect and a fierce carnivore. It has four wings that beat independently. This gives it an ability to maneuver in the air with superb dexterity. A dragonfly can put on a burst of speed, stop on a dime, hover, fly backward, and switch direction in a flash. This is a hunting behavior known as hawking. — Richard Preston

Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced [robots] wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. — Stephen Hawking

This picture of a hot early stage of the universe was first put forward by the scientist George Gamow in a famous paper written in 1948 with a student of his, Ralph Alpher. Gamow had quite a sense of humor - he persuaded the nuclear scientist Hans Bethe to add his name to the paper to make the list of authors "Alpher, Bethe, Gamow, — Stephen Hawking

The progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe. — Stephen Hawking

The entropy of an isolated system always increases, and that when two systems are joined together, the entropy of the combined system is greater than the sum of the entropies of the individual systems. — Stephen Hawking

I'm a child myself, in the sense that I'm still looking. Children are fascinated by black holes and ask me questions. I find they soon get the idea if it is explained in nontechnical language. — Stephen Hawking

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. — Stephen Hawking

The universe doesn't allow perfection. — Stephen Hawking

When there's life, there's hope — Stephen Hawking

I am damned if I'm going to die before I have unraveled more of the universe — Stephen Hawking

It's time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. We also happen to be sociable creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark. — Stephen Hawking

To boldly go where no one has gone before — Stephen Hawking

In space no one can hear you scream; and in a black hole, no one can see you disappear. — Stephen Hawking

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people. — Stephen Hawking

My discovery that black holes emit radiation raised serious problems of consistency with the rest of physics. I have now resolved these problems, but the answer turned out to be not what I expected. — Stephen Hawking

Another prediction of general relativity is that time should appear to run slower near a massive body like the earth. — Stephen Hawking

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. — Stephen Hawking

If the government is covering up knowledge of aliens, they are doing a better job of it than they do at anything else. — Stephen Hawking

Money is not everything. There's Master card & Visa. — Stephen Hawking

At first, I believed that disorder would decrease when the universe recollapsed. This was because I thought that the universe had to return to a smooth and ordered state when it became small again. This would mean that the contracting phase would be like the time reverse of the expanding phase. People in the contracting phase would live their lives backward: they would die before they were born and get younger as the universe contracted. — Stephen Hawking

Computers double their performance every month. — Stephen Hawking

This required abandoning the idea that there is a universal quantity called time that all clocks measure. Instead, everyone would have his own personal time. The clocks of two people would agree if they were at rest with respect to each other but not if they were moving. This has been confirmed by a number of experiments, including one in which an extremely accurate timepiece was flown around the world and then compared with one that had stayed in place. If you wanted to live longer, you could keep flying to the east so the speed of the plane added to the earth — Stephen Hawking

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls ... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? — Stephen Hawking

In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder. — Stephen Hawking

Do you believe in first love - or should I pass by again? — Stephen Hawking

I enjoy all forms of music - pop, classical and opera. — Stephen Hawking

It is very important for young people keep their sense of wonder and keep asking why. — Stephen Hawking

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time. — Stephen Hawking

The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist. — Stephen Hawking

I have visited Japan several times and have always been shown wonderful hospitality. — Stephen Hawking

Which scientific puzzle confounds the genius of Hawking? "Women," he said. "They are a complete mystery. — John M. Gottman

In fact, if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that produced life like ours are immense. — Stephen Hawking

What was God doing before the divine creation? — Stephen Hawking

Does general relativity predict that our universe should have had a big bang, a beginning of time? — Stephen Hawking

We are only the temporary custodians of the particles which we are made of. They will go on to lead a future existence in the enormous universe that made them — Stephen Hawking

If one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be *psychologically* disabled as well. — Stephen Hawking

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

I can't disguise myself with a wig and dark glasses - the wheelchair gives me away. — Stephen Hawking

This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for not playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing noting for his livelihood. In the next cell, was another man, who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without a licence; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the Stamp-office. — Charles Dickens

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics. — Stephen Hawking

I was never top of the class at school, but my classmates must have seen potential in me, because my nickname was Einstein. — Lucy Hawking

IF you remember every word in this book, your memory will have recorded about two million pieces of information: the order in your brain will have increased by about two million units. However, while you have been reading the book, you will have converted at least a thousand calories of ordered energy, in the form of food, into disordered energy, in the form of heat that you lose to the air around you by convection and sweat. This will increase the disorder of the universe by about twenty million million million million units - or about ten million million million times the increase in order in your brain - and that's if you remember everything in this book. — Stephen Hawking

But the idea that God might want to change his mind is an example of the fallacy, pointed out by St. Augustine, of imagining God as a being existing in time: time is a property only of the universe that God created. — Stephen Hawking

If time travel were possible we'd be inundated with tourist from the future. — Stephen Hawking

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. — Stephen Hawking

I bear to the wisdom of Sir Philip Sidney, who said that next to hunting he liked hawking worst. However, though he may have fallen into as hyperbolical an extreme, yet who can put too great a scorn upon their folly, that, to bring home a rascal deer, or a few rotten conies, submit their lives to the will or passion of such as may take them under a penalty no less slight than there is discretion shown in exposing them. — Frances Osborne

Breaking new factual ground is not what Zeitgeist is about, however. Rather, the video is a powerful and fast-acting dose of agitprop, hawking its conclusions as givens. Unfortunately, like most propaganda, it doesn't play fair with its intended audience. At times, while watching it, I felt like I was getting Malcolm McDowell's treatment in Clockwork Orange: eyes pried wide open while getting bombarded with quick-cut atrocity photos. — Jay Kinney

Once again, my colleague Stephen Hawking has upset the apple cart. The event horizon surrounding a black hole was once though to be an imaginary sphere. But recent theories indicate that it may actually be physical, maybe even a sphere of fire. But I don't trust any of these calculations until we have a full-blown string theory calculation, since Einstein's theory by itself is incomplete. — Michio Kaku

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. — Stephen Hawking

do we really have reason to believe that an objective reality exists? — Stephen Hawking

It is tribute to how far we have come in theoretical physics that it now takes enormous machines and a great deal of money to perform experiments whose results we can not predict. — Stephen Hawking

The large-scale homogeneity of the universe makes it very difficult to believe that the structure of the universe is determined by anything so peripheral as some complicated molecular structure on a minor planet orbiting a very average star in the outer suburbs of a fairly typical galaxy. — Stephen Hawking

Many badly needed goals, like fusion and cancer cure, would be achieved much sooner if we invested more. — Stephen Hawking

(According to some accounts, a journalist told Eddington in the early 1920s that he had heard there were only three people in the world who understood general relativity. Eddington paused, then replied, "I am trying to think who the third person is.") — Stephen Hawking

. . .a scientific theory is just a mathematical model we make to describe our observations: it exists only in our minds. So it is meaningless to ask: which is real, "real" or "imaginary" time? It is simply a matter of which is the more useful description. — Stephen Hawking

The wealth of America isn't an inventory of goods; it's an organic,
living entity, a fragile, pulsing fabric of ideas, expectations, loyalties,
moral commitments, visions, and people. To slice it up like an apple
pie and redistribute it would destroy it just as surely as trying to share
Stephen Hawking's intellect by sharing slices of his brain would surely
kill him. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator. — Stephen Hawking

Using e-mail, I can communicate with scientists all over the world. — Stephen Hawking

I regard the afterlife to be a fairy story for people that are afraid of the dark — Stephen Hawking

We also now have evidence for several other black holes in systems like Cygnus X-l in our galaxy and in two neighboring galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds. The — Stephen Hawking

As often happens in science, discoveries are made in the pursuit of an elusive (and sometimes nonexistent) goal. — Stephen Hawking

Simplicity is a matter of taste — Stephen Hawking

Being an investment banker is pretty much the perfect job for an all around triple-threat genius, and because I'm doing so well with it, I know I'm actually smarter than certifiable geniuses like Stephen Hawking and Einstein. — A.D. Aliwat

What place, then, for a creator? — Stephen Hawking

We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with And, but I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible at that time. — Stephen Hawking

Over a very small number of rolls of the dice, the uncertainty principle is very important. — Stephen Hawking

It was Einstein's dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein's day hadn't made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal. — Stephen Hawking

There should be a better way to start a day than waking up every morning. — Stephen Hawking

In this way a process of evolution was started that led to the development of more and more complicated, self-reproducing organisms. The first primitive forms of life consumed various materials, including hydrogen sulfide, and released oxygen. This gradually changed the atmosphere to the composition that it has today, and allowed the development of higher forms of life such as fish, reptiles, mammals, and ultimately the human race. — Stephen Hawking

The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can't understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science 'God', but it wouldn't be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions. — Stephen Hawking

Exploration by real people inspires us. — Stephen Hawking

It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law, than it takes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish. — H.L. Mencken