Stephen Hawking Quotes

That is a big question we all have: are we alone in the universe? And exoplanets confirm the suspicion that planets are not rare.

Yes, of course. Are you really so arrogant as to believe we are alone in this universe? Millions of stars, and we're supposed to be the only living creatures? No, there are many things out there, we just don't know.

People quite often think of the question 'Are we alone in the universe?' in terms of other civilizations out there: life forms that have reached at least our level of technological development.

The Eerie Silence: are we alone in the universe?

Personally, I do not know whether humankind is alone in this vast universe. But I do know that we should cherish our existence on this precious speck of matter... the greatest gift that could be bestowed upon us. For all practical purposes, there is only one planet Earth.

When I was a little kid, we only knew about our nine planets. Since then, we've downgraded Pluto but have discovered that other solar systems and stars are common. So life is probably quite prevalent.

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

The universe is very big - there's about 100,000 million galaxies in the universe, so that means an awful lot of stars. And some of them, I'm pretty certain, will have planets where there was life, is life, or maybe will be life. I don't believe we're alone.

I believe we are the only sentient beings in the universe, and I believe that 500 years from now, we will still be the only sentient beings around.

The best proof that there's intelligent life in the universe is that it hasn't come here.

Forty years as an astronomer have not quelled my enthusiasm for lying outside after dark, staring up at the stars. It isn't only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It's the sense I have that some of those points of light are the home stars of beings not so different from us, daily cares and all, who look across space with wonder, just as we do.

As the romance of manned space exploration has waned, the drive today is to find our living, thinking counterparts in the universe. For all the excitement, however, the search betrays a profound melancholy - a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence.

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question?

After they had explored all the suns in the universe, and all the planets of all the suns, they realized there was no other life in the universe, and that they were alone. And they were very happy, because then they knew it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find.

We may be living at that moment, on the cusp, when we go from being a species that feels a kind of loneliness in the cosmos to actually one sometime in the not too distant future being able to confirm the existence of other intelligent life.

I suppose my interest in looking for life elsewhere in the universe really dates back to my teens. What teenager doesn't look up at the sky at night and think am I alone in the universe? Well most people get over it, but I never did and though I made a career more in physics and cosmology than astrobiology I've always had a soft spot for the subject of life because it does seem so mysterious.

So many galaxies, so many planets out there in the universe circling so many stars... it just feels like there's a very good chance that there is another Earth-like planet out there that is able to support some kind of life similar to what we're familiar with.

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

What inspires me is the universe.

Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.

I think it's fantastically narcissistic to believe that in the entire universe, with all of the planetary systems that we've already discovered and the countless others that are out there, that we are the only forms of life. Now, the real question is not are there other forms of life out there, but are there other intelligent forms of life out there right now. Because the universe is not only really big but it's also really long. It's been around for a long time; it's going to be around for a long time.

I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.

All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist.