Stephen Hawking
I would like nuclear fusion to become a practical power source. It would provide an inexhaustible supply of energy, without pollution or global warming.Collection: Power
Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.Collection: Success
To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.Collection: Alone
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.Collection: Motivational
God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator.Collection: Science
Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.Collection: Travel
Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.Collection: Work
Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.Collection: Funny
A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?Collection: Pet
I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.Collection: Science
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.Collection: Intelligence
Women. They are a complete mystery.Collection: Women
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.Collection: Space
Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental equations of physics.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Computers
I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.Collection: Science
I think we have a good chance of surviving long enough to colonize the solar system.Collection: Chance
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.Collection: Computers
The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.Collection: Future
I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.Collection: Brainy
Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion.Collection: Science
Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible.Collection: Travel
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.Collection: History
God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God.Collection: Relationship
We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.Collection: Intelligence
There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.Collection: Computers
If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.Collection: Science
A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.Collection: Travel
I believe there are no questions that science can't answer about a physical universe.Collection: Science
As Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, triggering what Vernor Vinge called a 'singularity.'Collection: Intelligence
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.Collection: Computers
Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures. I enjoy communicating science. It is important that the public understands basic science, if they are not to leave vital decisions to others.Collection: Science
Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty.Collection: Beauty
I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.Collection: Space
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.Collection: Intelligence
Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.Collection: Humor
I don't have much positive to say about motor neurone disease. But it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do.Collection: Positive
Sometimes I wonder if I'm as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.Collection: Famous
Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time.Collection: Time
Computers double their performance every month.Collection: Computers
I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.Collection: Death
Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.Collection: War
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.Collection: Change
While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I'm no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.Collection: Women
The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.Collection: Science
Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.Collection: God
The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to minus 271.3*C - not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it.Collection: Alone
I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.Collection: Intelligence
People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.Collection: Anger