Quotes from Stephen Hawking

I have a full and satisfying life. My work and my family are very important to me.

I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.

I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found.

I first had the idea of writing a popular book about the universe in 1982. My intention was partly to earn money to pay my daughter's school fees.

I think the discovery of supersymmetric partners for the known particles would revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

If I had a time machine, I'd visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens.

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.

The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986. I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it.

There is no physical law precluding particles from being organised in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains.

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

I had not expected 'A Brief History of Time' to be a best seller.

Stem cell research is the key to developing cures for degenerative conditions like Parkinson's and motor neuron disease from which I and many others suffer. The fact that the cells may come from embryos is not an objection, because the embryos are going to die anyway.

Among physicists, I'm respected I hope.

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.

I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

I have wanted to fly into space for many years, but never imagined it would really be feasible.

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.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

If I had to choose a superhero to be, I would pick Superman. He's everything that I'm not.

It is tribute to how far we have come in theoretical physics that it now takes enormous machines and a great deal of money to perform experiments whose results we can not predict.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.

It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God.