Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end
Not Stephen Hawking — he was quoting Woody AllenWoody Allenb. 1 December 1935 · American filmmaker, comedian and writer
?Attribution status: Disputed. Hawking is ruled out by his own words. Woody Allen is the attribution Hawking gave and the one everyone repeats — but it has never been pinned to anything Allen wrote or performed.?Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed
Hawking is credited with this because he is the one people heard say it. In a CNN Talk Asia interview broadcast on 4 July 2006 he used the line and attributed it in the same sentence — “as Woody Allen said.” That much is on the record. Whether it is Allen’s is a separate and unsettled question: Wikiquote has never been able to source it to him, and the joke turns up in French print two decades before anyone attached his name to it.
“Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end” — Woody Allen
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Stephen Hawking. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
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In context
Evoking the world of Woody Allen — American filmmaker, comedian and writer. Theme: "Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
What is actually on the record
Documented use
CNN “Talk Asia” interview with Stephen Hawking
Broadcast
4 July 2006
What Hawking said
“…as Woody Allen said” — he credited it, not claimed it
Allen’s own source
None located — Wikiquote lists it as unsourced
We have long enough, as the universe should last for ever. Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end, as Woody Allen said.
From the CNN “Talk Asia” transcript of 4 July 2006. The original cnn.com page is gone; we read the text in the Internet Archive’s capture ↗.
The decisive evidence is Hawking’s own sentence. In the archived CNN “Talk Asia” transcript ↗ of 4 July 2006 he says: “We have long enough, as the universe should last for ever. Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end, as Woody Allen said.” He is quoting, and he names his source.
Wikiquote’s Talk page for Hawking ↗ reaches the same conclusion and adds a useful negative: a 2007 Berkeley lecture often given as the origin has a published transcript that “doesn’t include the word ‘eternity’.”
Allen’s side is much weaker than its popularity suggests. The line sits in the Unsourced section of Wikiquote’s Talk page for Woody Allen ↗ and has never been promoted to his main quotations page ↗ — meaning no editor has ever produced a film, book, interview or routine containing it.
That Talk page also records printings that predate the Allen attribution entirely, in French: “l’éternité c’est long, surtout vers la fin” in Maurice Frot’s Le Roi des Rats (1965) and Pierre Henri Degrégori’s Le Temps de boules de neige (1969), neither crediting Allen. We were unable to inspect those two books ourselves, so we report them as that page’s research rather than as our own confirmation.
We cannot determine what work this line first appeared in, so we assert no rights status. Every candidate origin is modern — the earliest printing anyone has produced is 1965 — so it is certainly not in the United States public domain, which currently reaches published works through 1930. But with no identified source work and no established author, there is no identifiable rights holder either.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Often misattributed
A rare case where the misattribution has an innocent cause: Hawking really did say it out loud, on camera, and gave credit that almost nobody repeated.
✕
Commonly credited toStephen Hawking Refuted
Refuted by Hawking himself. In the archived CNN transcript ↗ he ends the sentence “…as Woody Allen said.” The quotation survived; the four-word credit did not.
✕
Credited by Hawking toWoody Allen Unsourced
This is the best attribution available, and it is still weak. The line has never made it out of the Unsourced list on Allen’s Wikiquote Talk page ↗, and does not appear on his main page ↗ at all. No film, book or routine of his has been produced containing it.
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Older than the creditA French saying Context
Wikiquote editors found “l’éternité c’est long, surtout vers la fin” in a 1965 French novel and again in 1969, in neither case credited to Allen — who would have been in his twenties. See the Talk-page research ↗; we could not inspect the books directly.
✓Hawking gave the credit away in the same breath and it was lost anyway — and the man he gave it to may not be the author either. Read the transcript ↗.
Context
Why it mattered
The line is doing real work in the interview, not just getting a laugh. Hawking has just argued that the universe created itself out of nothing under the laws of physics, and that we therefore have unlimited time to understand it completely. The joke is the deflation: unlimited time is not obviously a comfort.
It is also a small case study in how attribution decays. Hawking cited his source clearly and in public. The sentence was quotable and the credit was not, so within a few years the internet had reassigned the joke to the more striking speaker — a physicist in a wheelchair discussing eternity — and dropped the comedian entirely.
The quotation survived. The credit did not.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
b. 1 December 1935 · American filmmaker, comedian and writer
Woody Allen, born Allen Stewart Königsberg in Brooklyn in 1935, began as a gag writer and stand-up comedian before turning to film. His comic register — mortality, God and the universe handled as material for a nightclub set — is exactly the register of this line, which is a large part of why the attribution to him has stuck so easily. It is worth being clear that fitting an author’s voice is not evidence, and in this case no source has ever been produced.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The best documented use (Chicago)
Hawking, Stephen. Interview, “Talk Asia,” CNN, 4 July 2006. Archived at the Internet Archive. Hawking quotes the line and attributes it to Woody Allen; no source for Allen’s authorship has been located.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end’?” Last verified 16 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/eternity-is-a-very-long-time-especially-towards-the-end/