Stephen Hawking

A Brief History of Time

"It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us."

"In fact, if one considers the possible constants and laws that could have emerged, the odds against a universe that has produced life like ours are immense."

"Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that recollapse from those that go on expanding forever, that even now, 10 thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million million, the universe would have collapsed before it ever reached its present size."