The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.

People need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. (1988-10-17)

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.

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. (1988-10-17)

I think it would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low. About aliens.

One could say: "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary." The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.

Maybe that is our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities.The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability.

The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can. (2006-08-16)

I find that American & Scandinavian accents work better with women. Response to a question about the American accent of his synthesiser.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E = mc2. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers.

All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. Perhaps that is why I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

Maybe my variety is due to bad absorption of vitamins. After being asked by the British Medical Journal why his condition had evolved differently from a typical case of motor neurone disease.