Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life...

Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this.

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?...

There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. (…) However bad life may seem (…) While there’s life, there is hope.

Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.

The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. … Time itself...

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of...

If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?

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...

It is generally recognized that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multitasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be...

[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.

La mayoría de las constantes fundamentales que aparecen en las teorías están ajustadas con tanta precisión que si su valor cambiara aunque sólo fuera ligeramente el universo sería cualitativamente diferente, y en la mayoría de...

why are we here?where do we come from?traditionally,these are questionsfor philosophy,but philosophy is dead

t is generally recognized that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multitasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be...

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...

Time and space are finite in extent, but they don’t have any boundary or edge. They would be like the surface of the earth, but with two more dimensions.

In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,...

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...

The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away.

God abhors a naked singularity.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and...

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”[The Science of Second-Guessing (New York Times Magazine Interview, December 12, 2004)]

The people who actually make the advances in theoretical physics don’t think in these categories that the philosophers and the historians of science subsequently invent for them

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

I believe in the possible. I believe, small though we are, insignificant though we may be, we can reach a full understanding of the universe. You were right when you said you felt small, looking...

When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to...

I like physics, but I love cartoons.

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.

Why is the universe the way we see it?” The answer is then simple: If it had been any different, we would not be here!

I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street

Yet if there really were a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions—so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we...

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end:...

Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a...

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.

Stephen Hawking said that his quest is simply “trying to understand the mind of God”.

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

One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are...