Stephen Hawking Quotes

Math is sometimes called the science of patterns.

To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

You’re not exempt from math if you’re a Republican, and you’re not exempt from math if you’re a Democrat. You’re not exempt from math if you’re a liberal, and you’re not exempt from math if you’re a conservative. You still have to do math.

Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.

If we're looking for intelligence in the universe I think everybody assumes that this has to start with life and so the question is: "How likely is it that there will be life elsewhere in the universe?"

I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen of the sciences because it claimed certainty. It was grounded on some fundamental certainties - axioms - that led to others.

Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

if you do not appreciate the mathematics, you cannot see, among the great variety of facts, that logic permits you to go from one to the other

An ounce of algebra is worth of a ton of verbal argument.

What I knew was I liked math and science, and I never wanted to memorize everything. I wanted to understand where it came from.

I think that it would be unwise of us not to believe that there is life outside of us, intelligent life. And so I do believe in aliens.

Formal logic is mathematics, and there are philosophers like Wittgenstein that are very mathematical, but what they're really doing is mathematics - it's not talking about things that have affected computer science; it's mathematical logic.

I believe only in the mathematics.

I like science and mathematics. When I say mathematics, I don't mean algebra or math in that sense, but the mathematics of things.

In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.

Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures.

I'm fascinated by the logic that leads to something.

I was just kind of doing the math.

Arithmetic is where the content lies, and not logic; but logic prompts certainty, and not arithmetic.

I don't see why there is no intelligent alien life in the universe.

Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.

Historically, I guess that's how science fiction works: you start by using aliens to think the unthinkable — and then, eventually, another writer, having grown a little more comfortable with the earlier notion, brings it into the human.

Only Numbers. Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.

Mathematics and logic have been proved to be one; a fact from which it seems to follow that mathematics may successfully deal with non-quantitative problems in a much broader sense than was suspected to be possible.