Quotes from Stephen Hawking

The success of A Brief History indicates that there is widespread interest in the big questions like: Where did we come from? And why is the universe the way it is?

our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.

We are lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries….The age in which we live is the age in which we are discovering the fundamental laws of nature.

philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions, the theory survives and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

Thus the possibility of time travel remains open. But I'm not going to bet on it. My opponent might have the unfair advantage of knowing the future.

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.

time is not completely separate from and independent of space, but is combined with it to form an object called space-time.

can one have atoms in which the nucleus is a tiny primordial black hole, formed in the early universe?

Most laws of nature exist as part of a larger, interconnected system of laws.

If you like, you can say that the laws [of nature] are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence.

Die wachsende Fähigkeit der Menschheit, das Universum zu verstehen, hat einen kleinen Winkel der Ordnung in einem zunehmend der Unordnung verfallenden Universum geschaffen.

It would be a poor sort of immortality, however, because any personal concept of time for the astronaut would almost certainly come to an end as he was torn apart inside the black hole!

In a sense the debate between Penrose and Hawking is a continuation of that earlier argument, with Penrose playing the role of Einstein and Hawking that of Bohr.

But real science can be far stranger than science fiction, and much more satisfying.

Though realism may be a tempting viewpoint, as we'll see later, what we know about modern physics makes it a difficult one to defend.

Somewhat surprisingly, this includes a form of electronic personhood, to ensure the rights and responsibilities for the most capable and advanced AI.

There is a history of the universe in which England win the World Cup again, though maybe the probability is low.

This process is known as inflation, something that was good for the universe in contrast to inflation of prices that too often plagues us.

We were told that you can never get something for nothing. But now, after a lifetime of work, I think that actually you can get a whole universe for free.

At some point during our 13.8 billion years of cosmic history, something beautiful happened. This information processing got so intelligent that life forms became conscious. Our universe has now awoken, becoming aware of itself.

People have searched for mini black holes of this mass, but have so far not found any. This is a pity because, if they had, I would have got a Nobel Prize.

People have always wanted answers to the big questions. Where did we come from? How did the universe begin? What is the meaning and design behind it all? Is there anyone out there? The creation accounts of the past now seem less relevant and credible. They have been replaced by a variety of what can only be called superstitions, ranging from New Age to Star Trek. But real science can be far stranger than science fiction, and much more satisfying.

I think this is an important subject for research, but one has to be careful not to be labelled a crank. If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately. No government agency could afford to be seen to be spending public money on anything as way out as time travel. Instead one has to use technical terms like closed time-like curves, which are code for time travel.

So what does this mean in our quest to find out if there is a God? It means that if the universe adds up to nothing, then you don't need a God to create it. The universe is the ultimate free lunch.