Stephen Hawking

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

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

[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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.

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: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

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 our own image.