Stephen Hawking Quotes

"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."

"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."

"Life would be tragic if it weren't funny."

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

"However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up."

"People who boast about their I.Q. are losers."

"Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks."

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."

"Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it."

"Quiet people have the loudest minds."

"I believe things cannot make themselves impossible."

"God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen."

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

"The universe does not allow perfection."

"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."

"Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion."

"I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these 'how' and 'why' questions. Occasionally, I find an answer."

"Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free."

"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."

"There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

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

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

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

"We are all different, but we share the same human spirit. Perhaps it's human nature that we adapt and survive."

"Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end."

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

"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit."

"Women. They are a complete mystery."

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail."

"Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E=mc²."

"Nothing cannot exist forever."

"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."

"The rise of powerful AI will be either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity. We do not yet know which."