Here are 11 great quotes from Stephen Hawking

His genius and wit won over fans from far beyond the rarefied world of astrophysics, earning comparisons with Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton

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Stephen Hawking experiences zero gravity during a flight over the Atlantic Ocean. File photo: AF

Published: 2:25pm, 14 Mar 2018Updated: 11:15pm, 14 Mar 2018

Physicist and author Stephen Hawking who died Wednesday aged 76, possessed an uncanny ability to come up with memorable phrases and sayings that summed up his world view. Here is a short selection of his many famous observations:

“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.”

“Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”

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

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”

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