Stephen Hawking

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imaginations, we learned to talk.

I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.

It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.

If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered.

My publisher told me that the number of readers of this book will be inversely proportional to the number of equations it contains.

Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.

It matters if you just don't give up.

Not only does God play dice with the Universe - he sometimes casts them where they can't be seen.

We shouldn't be surprised that conditions in the universe are suitable for life, but this is not evidence that the universe was designed to allow for life.

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.

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?

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.

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

Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

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.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.