“As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe. This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked: “What did God do before he created the universe?” Augustine didn’t reply: “He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.”
“An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!”
“Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory.”
“The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.”
“Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases.”
“There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don’t shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.”
“The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.”
“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.”
“If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.”
The Guardian: My Brief History: a memoir by Stephen Hawking – review
The New York Times: Many Kinds of Universes, and None Require God
The Washington Post: What made Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ so immensely popular?
The Guardian: A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking: the verdict
The Telegraph: With A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking brought science to the masses – whether they finished it or not