Stephen Hawking

1942–2018 · British theoretical physicist & cosmologist

Stephen Hawking was a British theoretical physicist best known for his work on black holes and for A Brief History of Time (1988), the book that made him the most recognisable scientist alive. He held the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1979 to 2009, working for most of his career with motor neurone disease and, from the mid-1980s, a speech synthesiser. In his later decades he spent much of his public voice on risk — nuclear weapons, engineered viruses, runaway AI — and on the argument that a species confined to one planet is a species betting everything on a single throw.

Traced to source

5 quotes we’ve traced to Stephen Hawking

“But the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future”

Verified

“I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space”

Verified

“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”

Verified

“It matters if you don't just give up”

Attributed

“The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people”

Disputed

Not actually Stephen Hawking

Often misattributed to Stephen Hawking

Famous lines widely pinned on Stephen Hawking that we’ve traced to someone else.

“Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end”

actually Woody Allen

“I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was able to reason”

actually Plato

“I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex”

actually Nathan Myhrvold

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change”

actually Unknown; descended from Leon C. Megginson’s 1963 Darwin paraphrase

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

actually Daniel J. Boorstin

“The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people”

actually Unknown — anonymous; circulating online by November 2011

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