Stephen Hawking Quotes on Science & the Universe

Hawking's remarks about science are really remarks about ambition: how big a question you are allowed to ask, and how confident you should be that it can be answered. They reveal the temperament behind the physics as clearly as any of his papers.

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

This is the closest thing Hawking had to a mission statement, and he repeated versions of it throughout his life. What is striking is the scale of the ambition stated so plainly. He was not after a single result or a tidy career; he wanted to understand everything, including the deepest question of all, why there is something rather than nothing. That refusal to settle for smaller questions is explored on the page about how his mind worked.

On the comprehensibility of the universe

A recurring theme in Hawking's writing and speaking was wonder that the universe can be understood at all. There is no obvious reason the cosmos should be governed by laws simple enough for human minds to grasp, and yet it appears to be. For Hawking, the fact that we can find those laws, and that they can be written down, was among the most remarkable things about existence. It is the conviction that powered the whole enterprise: the universe is knowable, so go and know it.

On curiosity

Hawking returned again and again to curiosity as the engine of science and the thing he most wanted to pass on, especially to young people. Be curious, he urged, wonder about what you see, and try to make sense of it. He treated curiosity not as a pleasant trait but as the fundamental scientific virtue, the starting point of every discovery he or anyone else had ever made.

A note on misattributed quotes

Hawking is one of the most quoted scientists in the world, which means a great many lines are attached to his name that he never said. Some popular "Hawking quotes" about knowledge and intelligence are, on closer inspection, of uncertain origin or belong to other people entirely. This site tries to quote only words that are reliably his. When in doubt, the safest place to hear Hawking on science is in his own books, beginning with A Brief History of Time.