Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)

Quotes

• 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.