"No one undertakes research in physics with the intention of winning a prize. It is the joy of discovering something no one knew before."
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Quote collection
Stephen Hawking quotes (page 18 of 22)
421 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. However bad life may seem, there is always hope."
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"Succeed in spite of management."
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"Simplicity is a matter of taste"
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"God not only plays dice, he throws them in the corner where you can't see them."
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"Science fiction can be exciting and very gripping, but it doesn't tell us anything about the universe in which we live."
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"There is no way that we can predict the weather six months ahead beyond giving the seasonal average."
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"Science does not deny religion, it just offers a simpler alternative."
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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."
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"Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can't be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution."
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"I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex. [Hawking adopted this statement from a remark made to him by his former post-doc, Nathan Myhrvold.]"
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"In this way, Edwin Hubble worked out the distances to nine different galaxies. We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars."
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"You can't regulate every lab in the world."
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"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?"
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"Issuing an insurance policy against abduction by aliens seems a pretty safe bet."
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"One can't predict the weather more than a few days in advance."
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"If it [the universe] was expanding fairly slowly, the force of gravity would cause it eventually to stop expanding and then to start contracting. However, if it was expanding at more than a certain critical rate, gravity would never be strong enough to stop it, and the universe would continue to expand forever."
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"Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics."
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"Physics as we know it will be over in six months - Max Born"
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"When I was young, Stephen Hawking wasn't the world's most famous physicist. The fame didn't arrive until the publication of "A Brief History of Time," by which time I was in my late teens. When I was a child, he was well known among physicists, but they are a fairly select, serious bunch, not much given to celebrity idolizing."
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