Stephen Hawking Atheist Quotes

#1. I'm not as famous as Stephen Hawking, but certainly in the U.S., I have a very high profile for a scientist. It is an awesome responsibility, one that I don't shoulder lightly. #Quote by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#2. The true miracle is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes a vast universe full of the amazing variety that we see. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#3. During our glorious year of 1974–5, while I was dithering over gravitational waves, and Stephen was leading our merged group in black hole research, Stephen himself had an insight even more radical than his discovery of Hawking radiation. He gave a compelling, almost airtight proof that, when a black hole forms and then subsequently evaporates away completely by emitting radiation, the information that went into the black hole cannot come back out. Information is inevitably lost.
This is radical because the laws of quantum physics insist unequivocally that information can never get totally lost. So, if Stephen was right, black holes violate a most fundamental quantum mechanical law.
How could this be? The black hole's evaporation is governed by the combined laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity - the ill-understood laws of quantum gravity; and so, Stephen reasoned, the fiery marriage of relativity and quantum physics must lead to information destruction.
The great majority of theoretical physicists find this conclusion abhorrent. They are highly sceptical. And so, for forty-four years they have struggled with this so-called information-loss paradox. It is a struggle well worth the effort and anguish that have gone into it, since this paradox is a powerful key for understanding the quantum gravity laws. Stephen himself, in 2003, found a way that information might escape during the hole's evaporation, but that did not quell theorists' struggles. Stephe #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#4. It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#5. In the early universe - when the universe was small enough to be governed by both general relativity and quantum theory - there were effectively four dimensions of space and none of time. That means that when we speak of the "beginning" of the universe, we are skirting the subtle issue that as we look backward toward the very early universe, time as we know it does not exist! We must accept that our usual ideas of space and time do not apply to the very early universe. That is beyond our experience, but not beyond our imagination, or our mathematics. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#6. If everything in the universe depends upon everything else in a fundamental way, it might be impossible to get close to a full solution by investigating parts of the problem in isolation. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#7. If you taught me to read and provided for me the same computer system as someone has provided for Stephen Hawking, I, too, would write great books. And yet you don't teach me to read, and you don't give me a computer stick I can push around with my nose to point at the next letter I wish typed. So whose fault is it that I am what I am? #Quote by Garth Stein

#8. As often happens in science, discoveries are made in the pursuit of an elusive (and sometimes nonexistent) goal. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#9. To apply quantum theory to the entire universe... is tricky... particles of matter fired at a screen with two slits in it... exhibit interference patterns just as water waves do.

Feynman showed that this arises because a particle does not have a unique history.

That is, as it moves from its starting point A to some endpoint B, it doesn't take one definite path, but rather simultaneously takes every possible path connecting the two points.

From this point of view, interference is no surprise because, for instance, the particle can travel through both slits at the same time and interfere with itself.

In this view, the universe appeared spontaneously, starting off in every possible way. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#10. It also predicted that the electron should have a partner: an antielectron, or positron. The discovery of the positron in 1932 confirmed Dirac's theory and led to his being awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1933. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#11. It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#12. In this way a process of evolution was started that led to the development of more and more complicated, self-reproducing organisms. The first primitive forms of life consumed various materials, including hydrogen sulfide, and released oxygen. This gradually changed the atmosphere to the composition that it has today, and allowed the development of higher forms of life such as fish, reptiles, mammals, and ultimately the human race. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#13. The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can't see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases - like my ALS - without also glimpsing its dangers.
Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage.
We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our pote #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#14. Einstein never accepted that the universe was governed by chance; #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#15. I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#16. If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#17. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would try to pass them. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#18. Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#19. Because one is using Euclidean space-times, in which the time direction is on the same footing as directions in space, it is possible for space-time to be finite in extent and yet to have no singularities that formed a boundary or edge. Space-time would be like the surface of the earth, only with two more dimensions. The surface of the earth is finite in extent but it doesn't have a boundary or edge: if you sail off into the sunset, you don't fall off the edge or run into a singularity. (I know, because I have been round the world!) #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#20. Thus, in a sense, we are all doomed. even if we stay away from black holes #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#21. Stephen Hawking ... found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child's play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now ... To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say, 'Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are. #Quote by Kurt Vonnegut

#22. We have seen in this chapter how, in less than half a century, man's view of the universe, formed over millennia, has been transformed. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#23. At times, I get very lonely because people are afraid to talk to me or don't wait for me to write a response. I'm shy and tongue-tied at times. I find it difficult to talk to people who I don't know. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#24. The moment you understand the whole Universe, is the moment you slightly begin to understand the way God's mind works #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#25. I don't know what my IQ is. People who gloat about their IQ's are losers #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#26. What did God do before he created the universe? #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#27. In physics a system is said to have a symmetry if its properties are unaffected by a certain transformation such as rotating it in space or taking its mirror image. For example, if you flip a donut over, it looks exactly the same (unless it has a chocolate topping, in which case it is better just to eat it). #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#28. Perhaps one day I will go into space. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#29. There was a young lady of Wight Who travelled much faster than light. She departed one day, In a relative way, And arrived on the previous night. The point is that the theory of relativity says that there is no unique measure of time that all observers will agree on. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#30. In my mind, I am free. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#31. This was a golden age, in which we solved most of the major problems in black hole theory even before there was any observational evidence for black holes. In fact, we were so successful with the classical general theory of relativity that I was at a bit of a loose end in 1973 after the publication with George Ellis of our book The Large Scale Structure of Space–Time. My work with Penrose had shown that general relativity broke down at singularities, so the obvious next step would be to combine general relativity - the theory of the very large - with quantum theory - the theory of the very small. In particular, I wondered, can one have atoms in which the nucleus is a tiny primordial black hole, formed in the early universe? My investigations revealed a deep and previously unsuspected relationship between gravity and thermodynamics, the science of heat, and resolved a paradox that had been argued over for thirty years without much progress: how could the radiation left over from a shrinking black hole carry all of the information about what made the black hole? I discovered that information is not lost, but it is not returned in a useful way - like burning an encyclopedia but retaining the smoke and ashes.
To answer this, I studied how quantum fields or particles would scatter off a black hole. I was expecting that part of an incident wave would be absorbed, and the remainder scattered. But to my great surprise I found there seemed to be emission from the black hole itsel #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#32. I am in touch with a company that hopes to replicate my voice. However, they are not replicating my original voice - if they did that, I would sound like a man in his 20s, which would be very strange! They are actually trying to replicate the synthesizer that sits on my wheelchair. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#33. Well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#34. It matters if you don't just give up. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#35. This "Hawking temperature" of a black hole and its "Hawking radiation" (as they came to be called) were truly radical - perhaps the most radical theoretical physics discovery in the second half of the twentieth century. They opened our eyes to profound connections between general relativity (black holes), thermodynamics (the physics of heat) and quantum physics (the creation of particles where before there were none). For example, they led Stephen to prove that a black hole has entropy, which means that somewhere inside or around the black hole there is enormous randomness. He deduced that the amount of entropy (the logarithm of the hole's amount of randomness) is proportional to the hole's surface area. His formula for the entropy is engraved on Stephen's memorial stone at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where he worked.
For the past forty-five years, Stephen and hundreds of other physicists have struggled to understand the precise nature of a black hole's randomness. It is a question that keeps on generating new insights about the marriage of quantum theory with general relativity - that is, about the ill-understood laws of quantum gravity. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#36. In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#37. For years, my early work with Roger Penrose seemed to be a disaster for science. It showed that the universe must have begun with a singularity, if Einstein's general theory of relativity is correct. That appeared to indicate that science could not predict how the universe would begin. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#38. Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a 'crank.' #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#39. What I have learned from life is to make the most of what you have got. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#40. We believe human begins have existed for only a small fraction of cosmic history, because human race has been improving so rapidly in knowledge and technology that if people had been around for millions of years, the human race would be much further along in it's mastery. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#41. Earlier today, we got a call from Stephen Hawking. He's a genius, and after 6,028 shows he ran the numbers and he said it works out to about eight minutes of laughter. #Quote by David Letterman

#42. Although in principle we know the equations that govern the whole of biology, we have not been able to reduce the study of human behavior to a branch of applied mathematics. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#43. The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#44. 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. We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its center about once every hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary, average-sized, yellow star, near the outer edge of one of the spiral arms. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#45. I have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#46. Simplicity is a matter of taste #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#47. One could imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. #Quote by Stephen Hawking

#48. Quantum physics tells us that no matter how thorough our observation of the present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.

The universe, according to quantum physics, has no single past, or history. The fact that the past takes no definite form means that observations you make on a system in the present affect its past. #Quote by Stephen Hawking