Quotes by Stephen Hawking - Page 11

So when people ask me if I believe 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 make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the earth; the earth is a sphere, it doesn't have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Believe
Exercise
People
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I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Death
Dark
Suicide
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Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker. Although the universe doesn’t have an end, it had a beginning in the Big Bang. One might ask what is before that but the answer is that there is nowhere before the Big Bang just as there is nowhere south of the South Pole.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Answers
Forever
Might
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What could define God, [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God. They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Law
People
Thinking
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I think my dad [ Stephen Hawking] would have been pleased if I had turned out a scientist because he truly believes that is the most interesting career open to anyone. But he also believes that you have to follow your own path in life and so he certainly wasn't going to push me toward theoretical physics when it didn't look like I was going in that direction naturally.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Dad
Believe
Thinking
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there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you've made the intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps. N my case, it often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find that they don't work, so I have to give it up.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Differences
Giving
Ideas
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Everything that civilisation has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools that AI may provide, but the eradication of war, disease, and poverty would be high on anyone's list. Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
War
Creating
Events
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If it were only a few degrees, that would be serious, but we could adapt to it. But the danger is the warming process might be unstable and run away. We could end up like Venus, covered in clouds and with the surface temperature of 400 degrees. It could be too late if we wait until the bad effects of warming become obvious. We need action now to reduce emission of carbon dioxide.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Running
Clouds
Waiting
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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.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Ideas
People
School
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The universe and the Laws of Physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: Either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn't combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn't form heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop, and so on...
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Quality
Law
Stars
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I think the next [21st] century will be the century of complexity. We have already discovered the basic laws that govern matter and understand all the normal situations. We don't know how the laws fit together, and what happens under extreme conditions. But I expect we will find a complete unified theory sometime this century. The is no limit to the complexity that we can build using those basic laws.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Knowledge
Science
Thinking
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As those who have seen Jurassic Park will know, this means a tiny disturbance in one place, can cause a major change in another. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause rain in Central Park, New York. The trouble is, it is not repeatable. The next time the butterfly flaps its wings, a host of other things will be different, which will also influence the weather. That is why weather forecasts are so unreliable.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
New York
Butterfly
Rain
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Please join me in applauding the ESA - European Space Agency’s historic efforts with the Rosetta Mission and landing a spacecraft on rotating comet. It may seem like a work of fiction, but it is very real, very impressive, and will help us to further uncover the mysteries surrounding the formation of the solar system. They made a beautiful short film using an imaginary landscape to illustrate today’s historic feat.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Agency
Beautiful
Real
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Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Communication
Technology
Reality
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As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe. This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked: What did God do before he created the universe? Augustine didn't reply: He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions. Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Religion
Firsts
People
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Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we 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.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Civilization
Order
People
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Think of our DNA. In the last million years, our DNA hasn't changed at all. It's really much the same as it was in the jungle, a million, two millions years ago. But in the last 200 years, our destructive capacities have increased many, many millions of times over. Why don't we see intelligent signals from outer space? Because in all likelihood, once the civilization reaches the point our civilization has reached, it destroys itself.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Intelligent
Thinking
Two
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Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on philosophers, but they have not been very kind to me... I have been variously called nominalist, an instrumentalist, a positivist, a realist, and several other ists. The technique seems refutation by denigration: If you can attach a label to my approach, you don't have to say what is wrong with it... I am sure that Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac didn't worry about whether they were realists or instrumentalists.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Science
Technique
Worry
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We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I learned from this exercise was not to begin a sentence with "And." When I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with "And," I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves at that time was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Kings
Symbolism
Taught
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If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe as we spread into space. If we are the only intellegent beings in the galaxy we should make sure we survive and continue. . . . Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth but to spread out into space. We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Moon
Two
Years
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In his eyes shone the reflection of the most beautiful planet in the Universe---a planet that is not too hot and not too cold; that has liquid water on the surface and where the gravity is just right for human beings and the atmosphere is perfect for them to breathe; where there are mountains and deserts and oceans and islands and forests and trees and birds and plants and animals and insects and people---lots and lots of people. Where there is life. Some of it, possibly, intelligent.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Ocean
Beautiful
Eye
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Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long term survival, is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Past
Selfish
Years
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With genetic engineering, we will be able to increase the complexity of our DNA, and improve the human race. But it will be a slow process, because one will have to wait about 18 years to see the effect of changes to the genetic code. By contrast, computers double their speed and memories every 18 months. There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Memories
Race
Real
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One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Jobs
Expanding Universe
Past
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This required abandoning the idea that there is a universal quantity called time that all clocks measure. Instead, everyone would have his own personal time. The clocks of two people would agree if they were at rest with respect to each other but not if they were moving. This has been confirmed by a number of experiments, including one in which an extremely accurate timepiece was flown around the world and then compared with one that had stayed in place. If you wanted to live longer, you could keep flying to the east so the speed of the plane added to the earth
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Time
Moving
Two
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One can see from space how the human race has changed the Earth. Nearly all of the available land has been cleared of forest and is now used for agriculture or urban development. The polar icecaps are shrinking and the desert areas are increasing. At night, the Earth is no longer dark, but large areas are lit up. All of this is evidence that human exploitation of the planet is reaching a critical limit. But human demands and expectations are ever-increasing. We cannot continue to pollute the atmosphere, poison the ocean and exhaust the land. There isn't any more available.
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Ocean
Dark
Night
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One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?
Stephen Hawking / Physicist
Believe
Philosophy
Real
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Stephen Hawking Quotes - Page 11

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