Quotes from Stephen Hawking

The idea of 10 dimensions might sound exciting, but they would cause real problems if you forget where you parked your car.

So 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 may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.

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.

I like physics, but I love cartoons.

The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.

I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die, I have so much I want to do first

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.

Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end.

Government works best under the glare of public scrutiny. Absent such scrutiny, abuses occur.

When we see the Earth from space, we see ourselves as a whole. We see the unity, and not the divisions. It is such a simple image with a compelling message; one planet, one human race.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory.

The human race does not have a very good record of intelligent behaviour.

God abhors a naked singularity.

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

We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe

There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.

People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.

The rate of progress is so rapid that what one learns at school or university is always a bit out of date. Only a few people can keep up with the rapidly advancing frontier of knowledge, and they have to devote their whole time to it and specialize in a small area. The rest of the population has little idea of the advances that are being made or the excitement they are generating.

We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?

The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes.

While there's life, there is hope.

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 complete description of the universe we live in.

The universe does not behave according to our pre-conceived ideas. It continues to surprise us.