“I am very aware of the preciousness of time. Seize the moment. Act now.”
“When you are faced with the possibility of an early death, it makes you realise that there are lots of things you want to do before your life is over.”
“Let us fight for every woman and every man to have the opportunity to live healthy, secure lives, full of opportunity and love. We are all time travellers, journeying together into the future. But let us work together to make that future a place we want to visit.”
“If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed. If you like, you can say the laws are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence.”
“You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in.”
“I think that when we die we return to dust. But there’s a sense in which we live on, in our influence, and in our genes that we pass on to our children. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.”
“I think computer viruses should count as life. Maybe it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive.”
“No matter how powerful a computer you have, if you put lousy data in you will get lousy predictions out.”
“In short, the advent of super-intelligent AI would be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours we’re in trouble.”
“The human mind is an incredible thing. It can conceive of the magnificence of the heavens and the intricacies of the basic components of matter. Yet for each mind to achieve its full potential, it needs a spark. The spark of enquiry and wonder.”
“Remember to 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.”
The Guardian: Stephen Hawking’s thoughts on God and AI pale in comparison to his scientific insight
The Wall Street Journal: Serious Doubt on Serious Earth
The Guardian: Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking review – God, space, AI, Brexit
The Washington Post: Stephen Hawking’s final musings on God, life in the universe and time travel
The Independent: Stephen Hawking's posthumous book 'Brief Answers to The Big Questions' says 'there's no God'
National Public Radio: 'Brief Answers To The Big Questions' Is Stephen Hawking's Parting Gift To Humanity