The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people
Not Stephen Hawking — an anonymous internet sayingUnknown — anonymous; circulating online by November 2011No documented author · earliest citation on record: 4 November 2011
There is no source for this line in Stephen Hawking’s work. It appears in none of his books, lectures or documented interviews, and Wikiquote’s Hawking page ↗ does not carry it in any section — not under Quotes, not even under Attributed or Misattributed. Quotation researcher Barry Popik ↗, who compiled the citation record for this saying, states plainly that there is no evidence Hawking originated it or even said it: the earliest citation he lists is an unattributed Twitter post of 4 November 2011, and the first post crediting Hawking does not appear until 7 October 2013.
“The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people” widely credited to Stephen Hawking, but there is no source for it in his work. The earliest citation on record is an unattributed tweet of 4 November 2011; the Hawking credit first appears in October 2013.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Stephen Hawking. 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 knowledge, doubt and character. Theme: "The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people". 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 "The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people". 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
Where the line actually comes from
Popularly credited to
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018)
Verdict
No source in Hawking’s work — an anonymous internet saying
Earliest citation on record
Twitter, 4 November 2011 — posted with no attribution
Earliest book citation
Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed! (2012), p. 138
One commenter posted the following: “The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.”
the earliest book citation — an anonymous comment, not a Hawking quote
Robert Todd Carroll, Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed! (2012), p. 138, as transcribed in Barry Popik’s citation record ↗. This is the earliest book appearance on record, and it treats the line for exactly what it was — an anonymous online comment. It was published a year before anyone credited Stephen Hawking.
Barry Popik’s entry ↗ for this exact saying states there is no evidence Stephen Hawking originated it or said it. The earliest citation he lists is a Twitter post of 4 November 2011 carrying the line with no author; the following day another user posted it credited to “Unknown author.”
The same record dates the first Hawking credit to a Twitter post of 7 October 2013 ↗, with further Hawking-credited posts in April 2014 and after. Hawking was alive at the time and died on 14 March 2018; no source in his own words has ever surfaced.
Wikiquote’s Stephen Hawking page ↗ does not carry the line anywhere — not in the sourced Quotes section, and not in its Attributed or Misattributed sections either.
A structurally similar but far coarser line, spoken by Abraham, appears in Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead, Vol. 9: Here We Remain ↗, published 7 January 2009 ↗. The wording differs and no researcher has linked the two, so we note it as a parallel rather than a source.
The exact wording has no identified author and no identified first publication — the earliest citation on record is an anonymous 2011 Twitter post — so no copyright status can honestly be asserted for it. The texts that quote it are separate works and remain in copyright: Robert Todd Carroll’s Unnatural Acts (2011–2012) and Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, Vol. 9 (2009), neither of which is the saying itself.
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
A magnet-name credit added two years late
This is one of the internet’s most-shared “Hawking” quotes, and the citation record shows the line was already circulating with no author at all before his name was ever attached to it.
✕
The exact wordingStephen Hawking No source
The line appears in none of Hawking’s books, lectures or documented interviews, and Wikiquote’s Hawking page ↗ does not list it under Quotes, Attributed or Misattributed. Barry Popik ↗ states there is no evidence he originated the saying or even said it, and dates the first Hawking credit to a Twitter post of 7 October 2013 — nearly two years after the line’s earliest citation on 4 November 2011.
✕
How it circulated first“Unknown author” The honest early label
On 5 November 2011, the day after the earliest citation, a Twitter user posted the line explicitly credited to “Unknown author,” per Popik’s citation trail ↗. That is still the most accurate credit anyone has offered.
✕
A cruder cousin, published earlierRobert Kirkman Similar joke, different words
Abraham’s line in The Walking Dead, Vol. 9 ↗ runs the same joke in far coarser language, and the volume was published on 7 January 2009 ↗, before any citation for the polite version. The wording is not the same and no quotation researcher has connected the two, so we record it as a parallel, not as the source.
✓The honest answer is that nobody knows who wrote it: the earliest citation on record is an unattributed tweet of 4 November 2011, and a 2012 skeptics’ book reproduces it as something “one commenter posted” (Barry Popik ↗).
Context
Why this one stuck to Hawking
The saying arrived on the internet with no author at all. In the citation record it simply appears — a one-line Twitter aphorism on 4 November 2011 — and the following day someone was already posting it credited to “Unknown author.” By 2012 the skeptic Robert Todd Carroll could quote it in a book as something “one commenter posted,” which is exactly what it was.
Hawking’s name arrived nearly two years later, in October 2013. It is an unusually good fit for the joke, which is precisely the problem: a line about brilliance being mistaken for madness sounds right in the mouth of the man who talked about imaginary time and exploding black holes. Attribution to a famous scientist is what turned a throwaway remark into a poster, and posters do not carry footnotes.
It began life as a comment, not a pronouncement — and spent two years with no author before Hawking’s name was attached.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1942–2018 · English theoretical physicist & cosmologist, Lucasian Professor at Cambridge 1979–2009
Stephen Hawking was an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, born in Oxford on 8 January 1942 and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1979 to 2009. His A Brief History of Time (1988) sold in the millions and made him the most recognisable scientist alive, a status that also made him one of the internet’s favourite hosts for unsourced aphorisms. He died on 14 March 2018 — more than four years after this particular line was first pinned on him, and it has never been found anywhere in his own words.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest citation on record
The earliest citation in Barry Popik’s record for this saying is an unattributed Twitter post by @SecularAdvocate, 4 November 2011 (Barry Popik, “The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people,” The Big Apple, barrypopik.com). The line is reproduced as an anonymous online comment in Robert Todd Carroll, Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed! (2012), 138. No source for it exists in Stephen Hawking’s published or recorded words.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-thing-about-smart-people-is-that-they-seem-like-crazy/