Thirty years ago I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, and given two and a half years to live. I have always wondered how they could be so precise about the half.
Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.
Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.
So next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.
While there is life, there is hope.
The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves.
We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe.
Observations indicate that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. It will expand forever, getting emptier and darker.
I’m the archetype of a disabled genius, or should I say a physically challenged genius, to be politically correct. At least I’m obviously physically challenged. Whether I’m a genius is more open to doubt.
If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would try to pass them.
Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool.
Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end.
We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?
The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.
We live in the most probable of all possible worlds.
If I have questions about the universe on my mind when I go to bed, I can’t turn off. I dream equations all night.
As a child, I wanted to know how things worked and to control them. With a friend, I built a number of complicated models that I could control. It was a natural next step to want to know how the universe works.
I want to encourage public interest in space. I have never let my condition stop me. You only live once.
The lesson of the book is that the universe is governed by the laws of science.
There are plenty of dead scientists I admire, but I can’t think of any living ones. This is probably because it is only in retrospect that one can see who made the important contributions.
Science fiction can be exciting and very gripping, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the universe in which we live.