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Who really said it

It matters if you don't just give up

Attributed to Stephen Hawking 1942–2018 · Theoretical physicist · Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, 1979–2009
Attributed In copyright

Hawking published a near-identical sentence — “It matters that you don’t just give up” — in the closing message of his final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018). The “if” wording asked about here is not that sentence: Wikiquote ↗ carries it only under Attributed, citing Shirley MacLaine’s 1990 memoir Going Within, p. 303 — a second-hand report, not anything Hawking wrote.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“It matters if you don't just give up” Attributed to Stephen Hawking (1942–2018). His own published wording is "It matters that you don't just give up" — Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018). The "if" variant is documented only in Shirley MacLaine's Going Within (1990), p. 303, per Wikiquote. — Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Estate of Stephen Hawking, with Hodder & Stoughton and Bantam Books (Brief Answers to the Big Questions); Shirley MacLaine and Bantam Books (Going Within)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Stephen Hawking — Theoretical physicist and cosmologist · Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge, 1979–2009. Theme: "It matters if you don't just give up". 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.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "It matters if you don't just give up". 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 the wording is actually tied to

Hawking’s own wording appears in
Brief Answers to the Big Questions
First published
16 October 2018 — Hodder & Stoughton (hardcover); Bantam Books (paperback)
The “if” variant is cited to
Going Within: A Guide for Inner Transformation
That citation
Shirley MacLaine, Bantam, 1 February 1990, p. 303 — as given by Wikiquote; not independently confirmed against the page here

So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future. From his final book

Hawking’s published sentence uses that, not if. That one-word swap is the whole distance between the line he wrote and the line circulating under his name.

Wikiquote: Stephen Hawking — the Attributed section

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s Stephen Hawking page ↗ lists “It matters if you don’t just give up.” only under Attributed — not among its sourced quotes — with the note “Attributed in Going Within (1990) by Shirley MacLaine, p. 303.”
  • The book named is real and correctly dated: Penguin Random House ↗ lists Going Within: A Guide for Inner Transformation by Shirley MacLaine, Bantam, 1 February 1990. It is a New Age self-help memoir, not a Hawking publication.
  • MacLaine did meet Hawking, and recounts the encounter in that book — Science Musings ↗ describes the exchange, in which Hawking tells her, “I don’t know that there is anything loving about energy.” A conversational remark of this kind is therefore plausible; it is simply not recoverable from any Hawking text.
  • The version Hawking himself put in print is the “that” form, and the excerpt above is his closing passage as reproduced verbatim in Marcelo Gleiser’s NPR review ↗ (16 October 2018): “… there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.”
  • Wikipedia’s article on Brief Answers to the Big Questions ↗ is used here for the publication date (16 October 2018) rather than for the wording: it summarises the same closing message but renders the sentence without “just” — “It matters that you don’t give up.”
In copyright

Both works that could carry this line are modern and firmly in copyright: Brief Answers to the Big Questions was first published on 16 October 2018, and Going Within in February 1990. Neither is anywhere near the pre-1931 cutoff for the US public domain, so the sentence should be used as a short attributed excerpt rather than treated as free text.

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

What goes wrong with this one

Nobody is stealing this line from another author. What has happened is smaller and more common: a genuine Hawking sentence has drifted by one word, and the drifted form has picked up a citation that points at somebody else’s book.

“It matters if you don’t just give up” Variant

No Hawking book or transcript located here carries the “if” form. His own published sentence reads “It matters that you don’t just give up,” in the closing message of Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018) — quoted verbatim in NPR’s review of the book ↗. “That” makes a statement; “if” leaves the sentence hanging.

Shirley MacLaine, Going Within (1990) Not a Hawking source

The only citation Wikiquote can offer for the “if” form is p. 303 of a New Age self-help memoir by an actress who met Hawking and wrote up the conversation — an encounter described here ↗. That is a second-hand report of speech, not a text Hawking wrote or approved.

“However bad life may seem … while there’s life, there is hope” Different, documented

This adjacent Hawking line is genuinely placed and dated — TIME ↗ ties it to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2006. Graphics often fuse the two, which makes the unsourced half look as well-attested as the sourced half.

Hawking really did write this thought. The sentence he wrote is “It matters that you don’t just give up,” and it closes Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018) — reproduced word for word in NPR’s review ↗ — so quote that, and quote the book.

Context

Why the sentence carries weight

Hawking was 21 when he was told he had motor neurone disease. Every version of the “don’t give up” sentiment that circulates under his name is doing work most inspirational quotations cannot do: it is being said by someone whose standing to say it is not in question.

That is also why it drifts. A line this useful gets typed from memory, screenshotted, cropped and re-typed, and somewhere along that chain “that” became “if”. The fix is not to doubt Hawking — it is to quote the book instead of the graphic.

It matters that you don’t just give up.

Read the full story

The full closing passage runs: “So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.”

Brief Answers to the Big Questions was published on 16 October 2018, months after Hawking’s death in March that year, by Hodder & Stoughton in hardcover and Bantam Books in paperback.

Quote Investigator has no entry on this line, so Wikiquote’s Attributed listing is the best existing research — and this page does not claim to have gone past it. The MacLaine page reference is reported exactly as Wikiquote gives it; the 1990 edition on the Internet Archive is lending-restricted and could not be read to confirm p. 303.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience Hope Purpose

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Stephen Hawkingen.wikiquote.org

The anchor. Carries this exact “if” wording under Attributed with the MacLaine citation, and keeps it apart from Hawking’s sourced quotes.
NPR: Hawking’s parting gift to humanitynpr.org

Marcelo Gleiser’s review, 16 October 2018, which reproduces the book’s closing passage verbatim — the anchor for the “that … just” wording quoted on this page.
Brief Answers to the Big Questionsen.wikipedia.org

Publication details for Hawking’s final book and his closing message to young people, in the “that” wording.
Going Within (1990) — Internet Archivearchive.org

Scan of the 316-page Bantam 1990 edition Wikiquote cites. Access-restricted lending, so p. 303 could not be read directly.
Going Within — publisher recordpenguinrandomhouse.com

Confirms the title, author, imprint (Bantam) and 1 February 1990 publication date of the cited book.
Love and physicssciencemusings.com

Account of MacLaine’s meeting with Hawking as told in Going Within, including what he actually said to her about the universe.
Stephen Hawking’s most memorable quotestime.com

Sourced list including the related, genuinely documented 2006 line about hope — given a place and year rather than floating free.

The author of the thought

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking

1942–2018 · Theoretical physicist and cosmologist · Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge, 1979–2009

Born on 8 January 1942, Hawking was diagnosed in 1963, at 21, with an early-onset, slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease. He went on to hold the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1979 to 2009, and to write A Brief History of Time, the book that put cosmology on supermarket shelves. He died on 14 March 2018 at 76; his final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, appeared that October and closes with the line this page is about.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this

Hawking's published wording: Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions (Hodder & Stoughton / Bantam Books, 2018) — "It matters that you don't just give up." The "if" variant is documented only at second hand: Shirley MacLaine, Going Within: A Guide for Inner Transformation (New York: Bantam, 1990), 303, as cited in Wikiquote, "Stephen Hawking," Attributed.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It matters if you don't just give up’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-matters-if-you-dont-just-give-up/

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