Stephen Hawking Time Quotations

We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house.

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

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time.

Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities... space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.

Most people don't have time to master the very mathematical details of theoretical physics.

I had not expected 'A Brief History of Time' to be a best seller. It was my first popular book and aroused a great deal of interest. Initially, many people found it difficult to understand. I therefore decided to try to write a new version that would be easier to follow.

Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time.

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

Only time - whatever that may be - will tell.

Time travel may be possible, but it is not practical.

We waste time, so you don't have to.

I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible.

What lies north of the North Pole?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries

This required abandoning the idea that there is a universal quantity called time that all clocks measure. Instead, everyone would have his own personal time. The clocks of two people would agree if they were at rest with respect to each other but not if they were moving. This has been confirmed by a number of experiments, including one in which an extremely accurate timepiece was flown around the world and then compared with one that had stayed in place. If you wanted to live longer, you could keep flying to the east so the speed of the plane added to the earth

The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future.

We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe

Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible.

I have so much that I want to do. I hate wasting time.

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

Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases.

It now appears that the way the universe began can indeed be determined, using imaginary time.

Time can behave like another direction in space under extreme conditions.

Our minds work in real time, which begins at the Big Bang and will end, if there is a Big Crunch - which seems unlikely, now, from the latest data showing accelerating expansion. Consciousness would come to an end at a singularity.

It's time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. We also happen to be sociable creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.

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.

I have wondered about time all my life.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

I put a lot of effort into writing A Briefer History at a time when I was critically ill with pneumonia because I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.