Stephen Hawking Quotes

God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God.

I'm not going to argue with people about the existence of God. I have not the vaguest idea of whether the universe was created by an intelligence.

God is a hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof; the onus probandi rests on the theist.

The correct statement of the laws of physics involves some very unfamiliar ideas which require advanced mathematics for their description. Therefore, one needs a considerable amount of preparatory training even to learn what the words mean.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Acceleration is finite, I think according to some laws of physics.

Newton came up with Newton's laws of motion and gravity. They worked. They were working.

One does not have to appeal to God to set the initial conditions for the creation of the universe, but if one does He would have to act through the laws of physics.

That's funny because if anyone actually did prove the existence of God we'd just tell him 'nice proof, Fraa Bly' and start believing in God.

Is there no God, then, but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe?

The question not many ask is: why are the laws of physics like they are?

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence

Does God exist? Well, I would say, 'not yet'.

So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton's equations, are reversible.

Now it seems that everything in the world stems from sources other than God, since the products of nature have their source in nature; deliberate effects can be traced back to human reason or will as their source. There is no need then to assume that God exists.

If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic. So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition of theism.

What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

If the laws of physics be for us, who can be against us?!

So when people ask me if I believe God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the earth; the earth is a sphere, it doesn't have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.

Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific.

Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.

Christ was a Jew, and God, he is supposed to have made the universe. That's a little far-fetched because if God made the world, who made God?

The fact of God is necessary for the fact of man. Think God away and man has no ground of existence.