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Who really said it

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering

Not Arthur C. Clarke, not Buckminster Fuller — origin unknown Unknown Earliest close match: The New Yorker, 12 November 1966 · quoted by Stanley Kubrick, who credited someone else
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Quote Investigator ↗ traced the saying and found no originator. Its earliest close match is Jeremy Bernstein’s profile of Stanley Kubrick in The New Yorker of 12 November 1966, where Kubrick quotes it and hands the credit away: “One of the English science-fiction writers once said…” Two years later, in Playboy, he gave a different and equally vague source — “a prominent astronomer.” Wikiquote does not place the sentence among Clarke’s own quotations at all: it appears in the Quotes about Clarke ↗ section, as Kubrick quoting a writer “usually assumed to be Clarke,” with the note that it “has sometimes been quoted in published works as if it were a direct quote of Clarke.”

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering” quoted, with no named author, by Stanley Kubrick in Jeremy Bernstein’s profile “How About a Little Game?”, The New Yorker, 12 November 1966. Kubrick credited “one of the English science-fiction writers”; in Playboy in September 1968 he credited “a prominent astronomer” instead. The line is widely printed as Arthur C. Clarke’s and as R. Buckminster Fuller’s. Neither attribution is documented, and Quote Investigator has identified no originator. · Verbatim: “Sometimes I think we're alone, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Arthur C. Clarke; R. Buckminster Fuller. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of doubt, wisdom and humility. Theme: "Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering". 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 "Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering". 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

The earliest close match, and what it actually says

Earliest close match
The New Yorker, 12 November 1966 — Jeremy Bernstein’s profile of Stanley Kubrick
Article
How About a Little Game?
Wording as printed
“Sometimes I think we’re alone, and sometimes I think we’re not” — the words “in the universe” are not there
Kubrick’s own credits
“one of the English science-fiction writers” (1966); “a prominent astronomer” (Playboy, September 1968)

Extraterrestrial life may seem an odd subject for a motion picture, but at this stage in his career Kubrick is convinced that any idea he is really interested in, however unlikely it may sound, can be transferred to film. “One of the English science-fiction writers once said, ‘Sometimes I think we’re alone, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering,’” Kubrick once told me. “I must say I agree with him.” The New Yorker, 12 Nov 1966

Kubrick is quoting, not coining — and he does not name the writer. Note also the wording: there is no “in the universe” here. The first citation in Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗ to carry that phrase is a newspaper cartoon caption printed the following month, with no attribution at all.

Quote Investigator’s chronology of the saying

How an unowned sentence found two owners

  • 12 November 1966 — Jeremy Bernstein’s profile “How About a Little Game?” in The New Yorker quotes Kubrick quoting “one of the English science-fiction writers.” This is the earliest close match Quote Investigator located. The profile was reprinted in Bernstein’s 1967 collection A Comprehensible World. Full text of the profile ↗
  • December 1966 — the saying is loose in newspapers within weeks, already detached from any author. Frank Interlandi ran it as an unattributed caption to a one-panel Los Angeles Times cartoon on 13 December, in the longer form with “in the universe”; on 28 December The Independent of Pasadena printed a variant credited to the painter Christiane Kubrick, Stanley’s wife. Both citations at Quote Investigator ↗
  • September 1968 — interviewed by Eric Norden for Playboy, Kubrick tells the story again with a different source: “I think it was a prominent astronomer who wrote recently…” He never names anyone. Interview text ↗
  • 1970 onward — Jerome Agel reprints both the profile and the Playboy interview in The Making of Kubrick’s 2001, and the same year the line turns up in I Seem To Be a Verb by Buckminster Fuller with Agel and Quentin Fiore, credited to an unnamed “BRITISH ASTRONOMER.” From there the credit hardens: onto Fuller himself in OMNI in 1980, and onto Arthur C. Clarke from 1989. Chronology and page citations ↗

No rights status can honestly be asserted for this sentence, because no author has ever been identified for it — it is an unsourced saying, not a line from a documented work. The container is a different matter: the earliest close match sits inside Jeremy Bernstein’s profile in The New Yorker of 12 November 1966, a magazine article of that year and therefore still under copyright in the United States, and Kubrick is quoting within it rather than being quoted as its author.

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

Two famous names, both credited later

This is a saying that arrived in print already orphaned. Kubrick quoted it and pointed away from himself, twice, in two different directions — and the empty slot he left has been filled in by editors ever since.

Arthur C. Clarke Attributed, never sourced

Quote Investigator found no evidence Clarke wrote or said it, and observes that Kubrick and Bernstein “would have credited Clarke if he had crafted the statement” — Clarke is named throughout the profile. Wikiquote agrees by placement: the sentence is not among Clarke’s own quotations but in Quotes about Clarke ↗, as Kubrick quoting a writer “usually assumed to be Clarke,” with the note that it “has sometimes been quoted in published works as if it were a direct quote of Clarke.” The Clarke credits Quote Investigator documents begin in 1989, and no two of them agree on the adjective.

Arthur C. Clarke — “Both are equally terrifying” Second-hand

The polished version, “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying,” is listed on Wikiquote’s Clarke page ↗ — but the citation given there is “as quoted in” Michio Kaku’s Visions (1999), p. 295, a secondary book, not any work of Clarke’s. Quote Investigator’s earliest instance of the “terrifying” wording is a 1996 newspaper piece by a Newsweek journalist.

R. Buckminster Fuller Misattributed

Fuller’s 1970 collage book I Seem To Be a Verb, made with Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore, reprints the saying credited to an unnamed “BRITISH ASTRONOMER” — a quotation the book carries, not one it claims. OMNI then printed it as Fuller’s own in April 1980, and the Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations repeated the credit in 1981, citing that very OMNI item. Quote Investigator ↗ hypothesises the attribution came from misreading the book.

Stanley Kubrick Two incompatible credits

In 1966 the source is “one of the English science-fiction writers.” In Playboy in 1968 ↗ it is “a prominent astronomer who wrote recently.” A writer and an astronomer are not the same person, and Kubrick names neither — the clearest sign that he was passing on something he had heard rather than read.

Nobody has been shown to have written this sentence. The whole documented trail begins with a man quoting it and telling you it was not his — see Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗.

Context

An orphan line, adopted twice

The thought had been in the air for years before the sentence existed. In a Pogo strip from June 1959, Walt Kelly had Porky Pine work through both possibilities — other planets with advanced brains, or ours being the cleverest going — and conclude, in the strip’s own spelling, that either way it is a mighty soberin’ thought. That strip was reprinted at the front of Intelligent Life In the Universe, the 1966 book by I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan. Sagan talked to Kubrick during the making of 2001, and Quote Investigator raises the possibility that the saying reached Kubrick that way.

What is certain is what happened next. Kubrick said it out loud to Jeremy Bernstein, Bernstein printed it in The New Yorker in November 1966 with an unnamed source, and within a month it was running as a newspaper cartoon caption with no source at all. An unowned sentence that good does not stay unowned. Jerome Agel put it back into circulation twice in 1970 — in his Kubrick anthology and in Fuller’s collage book, where it was tagged to a “BRITISH ASTRONOMER” — and from there editors supplied the missing name: Fuller by 1980, Clarke by 1989. Both men were plausible. Neither has ever been shown to have said it.

The most quotable sentence ever written about cosmic loneliness has no documented author.

The wording drifts at every hand-off

1959, Walt Kelly’s Pogo: either way, it is a mighty sobering thought — the idea, not yet the sentence.

November 1966, Kubrick in The New Yorker: “Sometimes I think we’re alone, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.”

December 1966, Frank Interlandi’s Los Angeles Times cartoon caption, unattributed: “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not—in either case, the idea is quite staggering!” This is the version people now quote.

1974, a Boston newspaper, speaker unnamed: “in either case, the prospect is very frightening.”

1989, credited to Clarke: “in both cases the idea makes me dizzy.” 1996: “Both are equally terrifying.” 2000: “either alternative is equally astonishing.” The adjective changes every time, which is what a saying does when nobody owns it.

Explore

Filed under

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

Doubt Wisdom Humility

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.

Quote Investigator: “Sometimes I Think We’re Alone…”quoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation. A dated chronology from a 1959 Pogo strip through the 1966 New Yorker profile to the Fuller and Clarke credits, with page-level citations and the conclusion that Kubrick popularised the saying but disclaimed authorship.
Wikiquote: Arthur C. Clarke — Quotes about Clarkeen.wikiquote.org

Where this wording actually sits on Wikiquote: not among Clarke’s own quotations but as Kubrick quoting a writer “usually assumed to be Clarke,” with the warning that it has been printed as if it were Clarke’s own.
Jeremy Bernstein, “Profile: Stanley Kubrick” (1966)scrapsfromtheloft.com

Full text of the New Yorker profile of 12 November 1966, containing the paragraph in which Kubrick quotes the line and credits “one of the English science-fiction writers.”
Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrick (September 1968)scrapsfromtheloft.com

Eric Norden’s interview, in which Kubrick repeats the saying and attributes it instead to “a prominent astronomer” — his second, incompatible account of where it came from.
Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space (1951)archive.org

Scanned copy of the Harper & Brothers edition — the book Quote Investigator cites for Clarke’s genuinely related but differently phrased remark that whether man is alone in the universe is “one of the supreme questions of philosophy.”
I Seem To Be a Verb (1970)archive.org

Scanned copy of the Fuller / Agel / Fiore collage book. Quote Investigator verified from scans that the saying appears here credited to an unnamed “BRITISH ASTRONOMER” — on a page whose text is printed upside down, which is why a machine text search of the scan does not surface it.

Not the author — the man who put it in circulation

Why Kubrick sits at the centre of this

Stanley Kubrick

1928–1999 · American filmmaker · quoted the line in 1966 and twice declined to claim it

Stanley Kubrick, born 26 July 1928 and dead on 7 March 1999, was the American filmmaker who built 2001: A Space Odyssey together with Arthur C. Clarke, expanding Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” into a novel and a script. The earliest close match for this saying that Quote Investigator has located is Kubrick quoting it in a 1966 New Yorker profile — and he went out of his way not to own it, crediting “one of the English science-fiction writers” then, and “a prominent astronomer” in Playboy in 1968. Clarke was named throughout that profile, so readers quietly filled in the blank Kubrick had left.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented appearance

Jeremy Bernstein, “How About a Little Game?” (Profile of Stanley Kubrick), The New Yorker, November 12, 1966 — the earliest close match located by Quote Investigator, in which Kubrick quotes “one of the English science-fiction writers” and names no one; reprinted in Jeremy Bernstein, A Comprehensible World: On Modern Science and Its Origins (New York: Random House, 1967), 230. The familiar longer wording, with “in the universe,” appears as an unattributed cartoon caption by Frank Interlandi, Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1966, C5. The credit to R. Buckminster Fuller derives from OMNI, April 1980, 39, apparently misreading R. Buckminster Fuller with Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore, I Seem To Be a Verb (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), 96B, where the saying is credited to an unnamed “BRITISH ASTRONOMER”; the credit to Arthur C. Clarke appears from 1989 onward. No originator has been identified.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/sometimes-i-think-were-alone-in-the-universe-and-sometimes/

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