Brief Answers to the Big Questions

by Stephen Hawking

Be brave, be curious, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done.

Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist for the Manhattan Project, said later of the first explosion of an atomic bomb two years earlier in July 1945, ‘We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”’

If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before. I hope for the best. I have to. We have no other option.

People asked a computer, ‘Is there a God?’ And the computer said, ‘There is now,’ and fused the plug.