Stephen Hawking

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?

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.

God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen. See related quotation from Albert Einstein.

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.

It is not yet clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

It matters if you just don't give up.

There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature.

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

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?