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Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking CH CBE FRS (8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018) was a British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.

His scientific works include a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Hawking was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Quotes

 * in chronological order

 * The subject of this book is the structure of space-time on length-scales from 10-13cm, the radius of an elementary particle, up to 1028cm, the radius of the universe. ...we base our treatment on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe.
 * with G.F.R. Ellis, "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time" (1973) Preface

 * I regard [the many worlds interpretation] as self-evidently correct. [T.F.: Yet some don't find it evident to themselves.] Yeah, well, there are some people who spend an awful lot of time talking about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. My attitude — I would paraphrase Goering—is that when I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun.
 * In a conversation with Timothy Ferris (4 April 1983), as quoted in The Whole Shebang (1998) by Timothy Ferris, p. 345
 * Heard in person by this contributor when Hawking showed-up in a Caltech physics class taught by Robert Christy in 1980 or '81; when asked about collapse of the state-vector he whispered to his assistant Chris (surname unknown) something at which point Chris stood up and said 'Stephen is paraphrasing Herman Göring by saying "When I hear the words 'Schrödinger's Cat' I reach for my gun."'.

 * Many people would claim that the boundary conditions are not part of physics but belong to metaphysics or religion. They would claim that nature had complete freedom to start the universe off any way it wanted. That may be so, but it could also have made it evolve in a completely arbitrary and random manner. Yet all the evidence is that it evolves in a regular way according to certain laws. It would therefore seem reasonable to suppose that there are also laws governing the boundary conditions.
 * "The Quantum State of the Universe", Nuclear Physics (1984)

 * If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you. One has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in; if one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well. In my opinion, one should concentrate on activities in which one's physical disability will not present a serious handicap. I am afraid that Olympic Games for the disabled do not appeal to me, but it is easy for me to say that because I never liked athletics anyway. On the other hand, science is a very good area for disabled people because it goes on mainly in the mind. Of course, most kinds of experimental work are probably ruled out for most such people, but theoretical work is almost ideal. My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics. Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in. I have managed, however, only because of the large amount of help I have received from my wife, children, colleagues and students. I find that people in general are very ready to help, but you should encourage them to feel that their efforts to aid you are worthwhile by doing as well as you possibly can.
 * "Handicapped People and Science" by Stephen Hawking, Science Digest 92, No. 9 (September 1984): 92 (details of citation from here).

 * My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
 * As quoted in Stephen Hawking's Universe (1985) by John Boslough, Ch. 7 : The Final Question, p. 77

 * There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe and what can be more special than that there is no boundary?
 * As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. p. 444

 * Einstein is the only figure in the physical sciences with a stature that can be compared with Newton. Newton is reported to have said "If I have seen further than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants." This remark is even more true of Einstein who stood on the shoulders of Newton. Both Newton and Einstein put forward a theory of mechanics and a theory of gravity but Einstein was able to base General Relativity on the mathematical theory of curved spaces that had been constructed by Riemann while Newton had to develop his own mathematical machinery. It is therefore appropriate to acclaim Newton as the greatest figure in mathematical physics and the Principia is his greatest achievement.
 * "Newton's Principia" in 300 Years of Gravitation. (1987) by S. W. Hawking and W. Israel, p. 4 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ISBN 0521343127

 * What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.
 * Der Spiegel (17 October 1988)

 * 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.
 * Der Spiegel (17 October 1988)

 * On seeing the Enterprise's warp engine while visiting the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation (where he would briefly play himself in the 1993 episode Descent, Part I), Hawking smiled and said: I'm working on that.
 * Quoted in The Star Trek Encyclopedia (1999) by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda, p. 185

 * For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
 * British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin'  (2014)

 * These lectures have shown very clearly the difference between Roger and me. He's a Platonist and I'm a positivist. He's worried that Schrödinger's cat is in a quantum state, where it is half alive and half dead. He feels that can't correspond to reality. But that doesn't bother me. I don't demand that a theory correspond to reality because I don't know what it is. Reality is not a quality you can test with litmus paper. All I'm concerned with is that the theory should predict the results of measurements. Quantum theory does this very successfully. It predicts that the result of an observation is either that the cat is alive or that it is dead. It is like you can't be slightly pregnant: you either are or you aren't.
 * During a debate with Roger Penrose in 1994 at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 121

Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
 * So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.
 * During the same 1994 exchange with Penrose as the previous quote, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 26 and also in "The Nature of Space and Time" (online text)
 * Unsourced variants: Not only does God play dice with the Universe; he sometimes casts them where they can't be seen.

 * I don't believe that the ultimate theory will come by steady work along existing lines. We need something new. We can't predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already! It could come in the next 20 years, but we might never find it.
 * Science Watch (September 1994)

 * The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes.
 * Interview with Ken Campbell on Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken (1995)

 * I think computer viruses should count as life … I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
 * Speech at Macworld Expo in Boston, as quoted in The Daily News (4 August 1994). A nearly identical quote can be found at the end of the second paragraph of his lecture Life in the Universe (1996).

 * It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
 * From the lecture (1996)

 * Einstein was confused, not the quantum theory.
 * Lecture at the Amsterdam Symposium on Gravity, Black Holes, and String Theory (21 June 1997)

 * All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them.
 * From the 1997 television program Stephen Hawking's Universe
 * Unsourced variant: All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. Perhaps that is why I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex. This quote seems to combine the above sentence from Stephen Hawking's Universe with a statement from the Foreword to The Illustrated Brief History of Time: As Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft (a former post-doc of mine) remarked: I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

 * Thus it seems that even God is bound by the uncertainty principle, and can not know both the position, and the speed, of a particle. So God does play dice with the universe. All the evidence points to him being an inveterate gambler, who throws the dice on every possible occasion.
 * Lecture "Does God Play Dice", 1999, hawking.org.uk

 * The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological — technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science.
 * From Hawking's article A Brief History of Relativity, in Time magazine (31 December 1999)

 * One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?
 * The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), p. 59

 * Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.
 * Interview "Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking" by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001)

 * I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
 * "Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking" by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001).

 * We shouldn't be surprised that conditions in the universe are suitable for life, but this is not evidence that the universe was designed to allow for life. We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics.
 * Quoted in "Leaping the Abyss" (April 2002) by Gregory Benford, in Reason Magazine

 * [on the possibility of contact with an alien civilization]: I think it would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low.
 * Appearance in the National Geographic Channel program Naked Science: Alien Contact, as quoted in The New York Times (24 November 2004) and a CNN transcript of an interview with Seth Shostak from Anderson Cooper 360 (26 November 2004)

 * I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.
 * Response upon being questioned as to his IQ, in interview with Deborah Solomon "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)

 * Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.
 * As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)

 * I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?
 * As quoted in a TED talk, "Asking Big Questions about the Universe"

 * My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.
 * As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)
 * Unsourced variant: "When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have."

 * The life we have on Earth must have spontaneously generated itself. It must therefore be possible for life to generate spontaneously elsewhere in the universe.
 * From an appearance in the Discovery Channel program Alien Planet (14 May 2005)

 * I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes. If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe but in a mangled form which contains the information about what you were like but in a state where it can not be easily recognized. It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost, if one keeps the smoke and the ashes. But it is difficult to read. In practice, it would be too difficult to re-build a macroscopic object like an encyclopedia that fell inside a black hole from information in the radiation, but the information preserving result is important for microscopic processes involving virtual black holes.
 * "Information Loss in Black Holes" (July 2005)

 * Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren't equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it's just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.
 * As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005)

 * I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.
 * As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005)

 * It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.
 * As quoted in "Return of the time lord" in The Guardian (27 September 2005)

 * Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.
 * As quoted in Stephen Hawking: A Biography (2005) by Kristine Larsen, p. 43

 * The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.
 * On voluntary euthanasia as quoted in People's Daily Online (14 June 2006)

 * The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.
 * ABC News interview (16 August 2006)

 * As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change... There’s a realization that we are changing our climate for the worse. That would have catastrophic effects. Although the threat is not as dire as that of nuclear weapons right now, in the long term we are looking at a serious threat.
 * At a press conference for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as the Doomsday Clock is moved forward by two minutes to five minutes to midnight, as quoted in "Nukes, climate push 'Doomsday Clock' forward" MSNBC (1 January 2007)

 * The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away.
 * Interview on Israeli television, as quoted in "Happy 65th Birthday to Prof. Stephen Hawking!" at StarTrek.com (8 January 2007)

 * I'm not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.
 * Quoted in "Stephen Hawking prepares for weightless flight", New Scientist (26 April 2007)

 * The zero-G part was wonderful and the higher-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come!
 * After completing a zero-gravity flight in a specially modified plane, as quoted in "Hawking takes zero-gravity flight" BBC News (27 April 2007)

 * In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?
 * Open question, posted to the Internet, as quoted in The Guardian, and "Watching the World" in Awake! magazine (June 2007); a month after posting the question he explained: I don’t know the answer. That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be aware of the dangers we now face.

 * To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
 * Foreword to The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Krauss (2007), p. xiii

 * I imagine what happens to human consciousness when we die is much like turning off a computer. I don’t believe in a heaven for computers. I think the after-life is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
 * Answering a question by Pik Botha about the fate of human consciousness at death, 50/50 (7 July 2008)

 * There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works.
 * Interview with Diane Sawyer, as quoted in "Stephen Hawking on Religion: 'Science Will Win'" on ABC World News (7 June 2010)

 * I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first ... I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
 * As quoted in "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'" by Ian Sample, in The Guardian (15 May 2011)

 * The Dreams that Stuff is Made of
 * Title of a collection, by Hawking, of the most significant papers in Quantum mechanics: The Dreams That Stuff Is Made of : The Most Astounding Papers of Quantum Physics and How They Shook the Scientific World (2011)

 * We should seek the greatest value of our action.
 * Response to a question on how we should live, in an interview with The Guardian (15 May 2011)

 * Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.
 * Interview with The Guardian (15 May 2011)

 * I used to think that information was destroyed in black holes. But the AdS/CFT correspondence led me to change my mind. This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science.
 * "Stephen Hawking at 70: Exclusive interview" in New Scientist, (4 January 2012). In his comment that he "used to think that information was destroyed in black holes", he is referring to the black hole information paradox.

 * Women. They are a complete mystery.
 * Response when asked what he thinks about most during the day, "Stephen Hawking at 70: Exclusive interview" in New Scientist (4 January 2012)

 * I believe that disabled people should concentrate on things that their handicap doesn’t prevent them from doing and not regret those they can’t do … I visited the Soviet Union seven times. The first time I went with a student party in which one member, a Baptist, wished to distribute Russian-language Bibles and asked us to smuggle them in. We managed this undetected, but by the time we were on our way out the authorities had discovered what we had done and detained us for a while. However, to charge us with smuggling Bibles would have caused an international incident and unfavorable publicity, so they let us go after a few hours.
 *

 * The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it.
 * BBC (2 December 2014)

 * Black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole, both to the outside, and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out.
 * Reith Lecture 2 : Black holes ain’t as black as they are painted (2015) · BBC Radio 4 audio file

 * If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
 * "Science AMA Series: Stephen Hawking AMA Answers!", reddit.com (8 October 2015); also quoted in "Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots" Huffington Post (8 October 2015)

A Brief History of Time (1988)

 * Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, $$E = mc^2$$. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers.

 * Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.
 * Ch. 1

 * It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery have conveyed a survival advantage. It is not so clear that this is still the case: our scientific discoveries may well destroy us all, and even if they don’t, a complete unified theory may not make much difference to our chances of survival. However, provided the universe has evolved in a regular way, we might expect that the reasoning abilities that natural selection has given us would be valid also in our search for a complete unified theory, and so would not lead us to the wrong conclusions.
 * Ch. 1

 * Bodies like the earth are not made to move on curved orbits by a force called gravity; instead, they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in a curved space, which is called a geodesic. A geodesic is the shortest (or longest) path between two nearby points.
 * Ch. 2

 * The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.
 * Ch. 8

 * Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.
 * p. 179

 * One could say: "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary." The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.
 * Ch. 8

 * Just like a computer, we must remember things in the order in which entropy increases. This makes the second law of thermodynamics almost trivial. Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases. You can’t have a safer bet than that!
 * Ch. 9

 * As I shall describe, the prospects for finding such a theory seem to be much better now because we know so much more about the universe. But we must beware of overconfidence - we have had false dawns before! At the beginning of this century, for example, it was thought that everything could be explained in terms of the properties of continuous matter, such as elasticity and heat conduction. The discovery of atomic structure and the uncertainty principle put an emphatic end to that. Then again, in 1928, physicist and Nobel Prize winner Max Born told a group of visitors to Gottingen University, "Physics, as we know it, will be over in six months." His confidence was based on the recent discovery by Dirac of the equation that governed the electron. It was thought that a similar equation would govern the proton, which was the only other particle known at the time, and that would be the end of theoretical physics. However, the discovery of the neutron and of nuclear forces knocked that one on the head too. Having said this, I still believe there are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature.
 * Ch. 11

 * Maybe that is our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities.The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability.
 * Ch. 12

 * Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
 * Ch. 12

Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)

 * The ultimate objective test of free will would seem to be: Can one predict the behavior of the organism? If one can, then it clearly doesn't have free will but is predetermined. On the other hand, if one cannot predict the behavior, one could take that as an operational definition that the organism has free will … The real reason why we cannot predict human behavior is that it is just too difficult. We already know the basic physical laws that govern the activity of the brain, and they are comparatively simple. But it is just too hard to solve the equations when there are more than a few particles involved … So although we know the fundamental equations that govern the brain, we are quite unable to use them to predict human behavior. This situation arises in science whenever we deal with the macroscopic system, because the number of particles is always too large for there to be any chance of solving the fundamental equations. What we do instead is use effective theories. These are approximations in which the very large number of particles are replaced by a few quantities. An example is fluid mechanics … I want to suggest that the concept of free will and moral responsibility for our actions are really an effective theory in the sense of fluid mechanics. It may be that everything we do is determined by some grand unified theory. If that theory has determined that we shall die by hanging, then we shall not drown. But you would have to be awfully sure that you were destined for the gallows to put to sea in a small boat during a storm. I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road. … One cannot base one's conduct on the idea that everything is determined, because one does not know what has been determined. Instead, one has to adopt the effective theory that one has free will and that one is responsible for one's actions. This theory is not very good at predicting human behavior, but we adopt it because there is no chance of solving the equations arising from the fundamental laws. There is also a Darwinian reason that we believe in free will: A society in which the individual feels responsible for his or her actions is more likely to work together and survive to spread its values.
 * pp. 133–135.
 * If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.
 * Last lines. Hawking later wrote: "In the proof stage I nearly cut the last sentence in the book... Had I done so, the sales might have been halved.

 * Science could predict that the universe must have had a beginning.

The Beginning of Time (1996)

 * Online text

 * When I gave a lecture in Japan, I was asked not to mention the possible re-collapse of the universe, because it might affect the stock market. However, I can re-assure anyone who is nervous about their investments that it is a bit early to sell: even if the universe does come to an end, it won't be for at least twenty billion years. By that time, maybe the GATT trade agreement will have come into effect.

 * The Steady State theory was what Karl Popper would call a good scientific theory: it made definite predictions, which could be tested by observation, and possibly falsified. Unfortunately for the theory, they were falsified.

 * To show this diagram properly, I would really need a four dimensional screen. However, because of government cuts, we could manage to provide only a two dimensional screen.

 * The universe would have expanded in a smooth way from a single point. As it expanded, it would have borrowed energy from the gravitational field, to create matter. As any economist could have predicted, the result of all that borrowing, was inflation. The universe expanded and borrowed at an ever-increasing rate. Fortunately, the debt of gravitational energy will not have to be repaid until the end of the universe.

The Universe in a Nutshell (2001)

 * We hold these truths to be self-evident that all P-brains are created equal.

God Created the Integers (2007)
Full title: God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History (2007).

 * Mathematics is more than a tool and language for science. It is also an end in itself, and as such, it has, over the centuries, affected our worldview in its own right.
 * Preface

Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking (2010)

 * So next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.

 * If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans. … We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
 * Also quoted in "Stephen Hawking warns over making contact with aliens" at BBC News (25 April 2010).

The Grand Design (2010)

 * Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Curiosity (2011)

 * We are each free to believe what we want and it is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful. (Quoted from the Discovery Channel, 15 August 2011.)
 * "Stephen Hawking There is no God. There is no Fate." from episode 1 ·

Hawking (2013)

 * We are all different — but we share the same human spirit. Perhaps it's human nature that we adapt — and survive.
 * Official Trailer

Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018)

 * If you like, you can call the laws of science 'God', but it wouldn't be a personal God that you would meet and put questions to. Although, if there were such a God, I would like to ask however did he think of anything as complicated as M-theory in eleven dimensions.
 * Ch. 1 "Is there a God?", pp. 36

 * It is a matter of common experience that things get more disordered and chaotic with time. This observation even has its own law, the so-called second law of thermodynamics.
 * Ch. 3 "Is there other intelligent life in the universe?", pp. 67

 * I discount suggestions that UFOs contain beings from outer space, as I think that any visits by aliens would be much more obvious - and probably also much more unpleasant.
 * Ch. 3 "Is there other intelligent life in the universe?", pp. 83

 * It is not even clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
 * Ch. 3 "Is there other intelligent life in the universe?", pp. 84

 * [ Planck ] said instead [of possibility that amount of radiation could have just any value] that radiation came only in packets or quanta of a certain size. It is a bit like saying that you can't buy sugar loose in the supermarket, it has to be in kilogram bags.
 * Ch. 4 "Can we predict the future?", pp. 92

 * If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately. No government agency could afford to be seen to be spending public money on anything as way out as time travel. Instead one has to use technical terms like closed time-like curves, which are code for time travel.
 * Ch. 6 "Is time travel possible?", pp. 133

 * I regard it as almost inevitable that either a nuclear confrontation or environmental catastrophe will cripple the Earth at some point in the next 1,000 years which, as geological time goes, is the mere blink of an eye. By then I hope and believe that our ingenious race will have found a way to slip the surly bonds of Earth and will therefore survive the disaster.
 * Ch. 7 "Will we survive on Earth?", pp. 150

 * With current technology interstellar travel is utterly impractical. Alpha Centauri can never become a holiday destination.
 * Ch. 8 "Should we colonize space?", pp. 174

 * It's tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction, but this would be a mistake, and potentially our worst mistake ever.
 * Ch. 9 "Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?", pp. 184

 * If a superior alien civilisation sent us a text message saying, 'We'll arrive in a few decades', would we just reply, 'OK, call us when you get here, we'll leave the lights on'? Probably not, but this is more or less what has happened with AI.
 * Ch. 9 "Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?", pp. 188

Attributed

 * It matters if you don't just give up.
 * Attributed in Going Within (1990) by Shirley MacLaine, p. 303

Misattributed

 * I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was able to reason.
 * Plato, The Republic, Book VII, 531-E

 * The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.
 * Sometimes attributed to Hawking without a source, but originally from historian Daniel J. Boorstin. It appears in different forms in The Discoverers (1983), Cleopatra's Nose (1995), and introduction to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1995)

Quotes about Hawking

 * In the year 1900 Max Planck wrote... $$E = hv$$, where $$E$$ is the energy of a light wave, $$v$$ is its, and $$h$$ is... . It said that energy and frequency are the same thing measured in different units. Plank's constant gives you a rate of exchange for for converting frequency into energy... But in the year 1900 this made no physical sense. Even Plank himself did not understand it. ...Now Hawking has written down an equation which looks rather like Plank's equation... $$S = kA$$, where $$S$$ is the entropy of a black hole, $$A$$ is the area of its surface, and $$k$$ is... Hawking's constant. Entropy means roughly the same thing as the of an object. ...Hawking's equation says that entropy is really the same thing as area. The exchange rate... is given by Hawking's constant... But what does it really mean to say that entropy and area are the same thing? We are as far away from understanding that now as Planck was of understanding quantum mechanics in 1900. ...[T]his equation will emerge as a central feature of the still unborn theory which will tie together gravitation and quantum mechanics and thermodynamics.
 * Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions: Gifford Lectures given at Aberdeen, Scotland April-November 1985 (1988) pp. 21-22 (paperback, 1989).

 * A few years ago, I had the good fortune to be lecturing in Tokyo at the same time as the cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair was an amazing experience. I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ. Everywhere we went, crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair. Hawking enjoyed the spectacle with detached good humor. I was thinking of an account that I had read of Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922. The crowds had streamed after Einstein as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later.
 * Freeman Dyson, Foreword to The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010), p. xv.

 * On the whole, the public shows good taste in its choice of idols. Einstein and Hawking earned their status as superstars, not only by their scientific discoveries but by their outstanding human qualities. Both of them fit easily into the role of icon, responding to public adoration with modesty and good humor and with provocative statements calculated to command attention. Both of them devoted their lives to an uncompromising struggle to penetrate the deepest mysteries of nature, and both still had time left over to care about the practical worries of ordinary people. The public rightly judged them to be genuine heroes, friends of humanity as well as scientific wizards.
 * Freeman Dyson, "The ‘Dramatic Picture’ of Richard Feynman", The New York Review of Books (July 14, 2011)

 * Hawking's intitial foray into quantum gravity was more modest than Wheeler's and other[s]... a sneak approach. He first wanted to know what the effect was of an ordinary, classic, curved-space gravitational field on a quantum system. He called this the semiclassical approach. Until that day, most quantum calculations had been done as if gravity didn't exist — they were hard enough without it in normal flat space-time... [Hawking accomplished this by] envisioning an "atom" whose nucleus was a catastrophically powerful black hole... Starobinsky ventured the opinion that rotating black holes would spray elementary particles. ...It was known from Penrose's work, among others, that you could extract energy from the spin of a black hole just like any other dynamo... in particles and radiation just like it did from a particle generator. ... But Hawking ... resolved to redo the calculation for himself ...he decided to warm up first, by calculating the rate of emission from a nonrotating quantum hole. He knew the answer should be no emission. ... his results were embarrassing. His imaginary black hole was spewing matter and radiation ... he was reluctant to tell anybody but his closest friends; he was afraid Bekenstein would hear about it. ... It meant that holes had temperatures, just as Bekenstein's work implied.
 * Dennis Overbye, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Scientific Quest for the Secrets of the Universe (1992)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Stephen Hawking


text:
Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 – February 12, 1984) was an Argentine intellectual and author of several experimental novels and many short stories.

Rayuela (Hopscotch) (1963)

 * 'Andábamos sin buscarnos pero sabiendo que andábamos para encontrarnos.'
 * Translation: We went around without looking for each other, but knowing we went around to find each other.
 * Chapter 1.

 * I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over again, every time I can make the mouth I want appear, the mouth which my hand chooses and sketches on your face, and which by some chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth which smiles beneath the one my hand is sketching on you.
 * You look at me, from close up you look at me, closer and closer and then we play cyclops, we look closer and closer at one another and our eyes get larger, they come closer, they merge into one and the two cyclopses look at each other, blending as they breathe, our mouths touch and struggle in gentle warmth, biting each other with their lips, barely holding their tongues on their teeth, playing in corners where a heavy air comes and goes with an old perfume and a silence. Then my hands go to sink into your hair, to cherish slowly the depth of your hair while we kiss as if our mouths were filled with flowers or with fish, with lively movements and dark fragrance. And if we bite each other the pain is sweet, and if we smother each other in a brief and terrible sucking in together of our breaths, that momentary death is beautiful. And there is but one saliva and one flavor of ripe fruit, and I feel you tremble against me like a moon on the water.
 * Chapter 7

 * Nada está perdido si se tiene el valor de proclamar que todo está perdido y hay que empezar de nuevo.
 * Translation: Nothing is lost if one has the courage to proclaim that all is lost and we must begin anew.
 * Chapter 71.

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

 * 'Ahora pasa que las tortugas son grandes admiradoras de la velocidad, como es natural. Las esperanzas lo saben, y no se preocupan. Los famas lo saben, y se burlan. Los cronopios lo saben, y cada vez que encuentran una tortuga, sacan la caja de tizas de colores y sobre la redonda pizarra de la tortuga dibujan una golondrina.'
 * Translation: Now it happens that turtles are great speed enthusiasts, which is natural. The esperanzas know that and don't bother themselves about it. The famas know it, and make fun of it. The cronopios know it, and each time they meet a turtle, they haul out the box of colored chalks, and on the rounded blackboard of the turtle's shell they draw a swallow.

 * "Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")
 * To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.
 * Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.
 * The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.
 * Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.
 * But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.
 * The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.
 * Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.
 * But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.
 * But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.
 * But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.

Un tal Lucas (1979)

 * 'AMOR 77'
 * Y después de hacer todo lo que hacen, se levantan, se bañan, se entalcan, se perfuman, se peinan, se visten, y así progresivamente van volviendo a ser lo que no son.
 * Translation: LOVE 77
 * And after doing all they do they rise from their bed, they bathe, powder and perfume their persons, they dress, and gradually return to being what they are not.

Julio Cortázar (1975)

 * "The snail lives the way I like to live; he carries his own home with him."
 * "The only true exile is the writer who lives in his own country."

Quotes about Julio Cortázar

 * For the majority of readers, Latin American fantastic literature operates under the tutelage of the great masters: Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Julio Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez. However, although few are acquainted with their works, many women began experimenting with this genre well before their male counterparts and were the true precursors of the form, though their names remained on the shelves of oblivion, without the recognition that they deserved. María Luisa Bombal, for example, wrote the fantastic nouvelle, House of Mist (1937) before the famous Ficciones (1944) of Borges, and the Mexican, Elena Garro, wrote Remembrance of Things to Come (1962) before the publication of García Márquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).
 * Marjorie Agosín "Reflections on the Fantastic" Translated from the Spanish by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman. In Secret Weavers: Stories of the Fantastic by Women Writers of Argentina and Chile (1992)

 * Julio was never a regional writer. You could see he was Argentinian, but he was more like Borges, more universal from the very beginning. He didn’t jump from the regionalism, he wrote universally all the time...It’s not that Julio was not very Argentinian, he was very Argentinian but his works were never as local.
 * Claribel Alegría Interview with Bomb Magazine (2000)

 * I belong to the first generation of Latin American writers brought up reading other Latin American writers. Before my time the work of Latin American writers was not well distributed, even on our continent. In Chile it was very hard to read other writers from Latin America. My greatest influences have been all the great writers of the Latin American Boom in literature: García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Cortázar, Borges, Paz, Rulfo, Amado, etc.
 * Isabel Allende Interview

 * I was influenced by all of them-by García Márquez, by Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso, so many of them-some of my own generation, like Eduardo Galeano. It's easy for me to write because I don't have to invent anything. They already found a voice, a way of telling us to ourselves, so it's easy.
 * 1994 interview in Conversations with Isabel Allende (1999)

 * I have a commitment to many of my major characters who have brown skin. That's a commitment to the story of a different character that you're not used to seeing in literature. In Julio Cortázar's work, for example, I can deal with his Latin American history, I can deal with the language, but his women have white, porcelain skin. They're Argentine, probably from a European background.
 * Ana Castillo 1991 interview in Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers edited by Hector A. Torres (2007)

 * One of the first people I read was García Márquez and One Hundred Years of Solitude when I was about nineteen or eighteen. And Julio Cortázar. I read all of Jorge Amado. I can tell you I read everybody and everything. And they would drive me nuts! But I was compelled to it. I was driven to the mechanics of what they were doing...I read and reread Julio Cortázar to try to learn from the writer the labyrinth of his style...I think he is one of the best examples of playing with time. When I was going to write The Mixquiahuala Letters I was twenty-three, and I had this idea about playing with time-that time was fluid-and I mentioned this project to a friend of mine, who was getting his Master's in Spanish literature, and he said that's already been done!
 * Ana Castillo 1991 interview in Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers edited by Hector A. Torres (2007)

 * Cortázar…whom I admire deeply, I met much later in my life...Cortázar is the one who is closest to my way of understanding the act of writing. And nearer to my heart. I admire Carlos Fuentes on the opposite extreme of the equation. That is why I wrote a book on both of them, Entrecruzamientos: Cortázar/Fuentes.
 * Luisa Valenzuela Interview (2018)

 * Cualquiera que no lea a Cortázar está condenado. No leerlo es una seria enfermedad invisible que, con el tiempo, puede traer consecuencias terribles. Semejante en cierto modo al que nunca ha saboreado un durazno, el hombre se volverá calladamente más triste, notablemente más pálido y es probable que, poco a poco, acabe perdiendo todo el pelo.
 * Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a grave invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who had never tasted peaches. He would be quietly getting sadder, noticeably paler, and probably little by little, he would lose his hair.
 * Pablo Neruda

title: Julio Cortázar


text:
Talk:Jean-Luc Godard

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Jean-Luc Godard. --Antiquary 17:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * [When he received a pie in the face at the Cannes film festival in 1985, he licked pie off of his cigar and said]: "C'est ce qui arrive quand le cinema muet rencontre le cinema a textes." "This is what happens when silent movies meet talking pictures."

 * I write essays in the form of novels, or novels in the form of essays. I'm still as much of a critic as I ever was during the time of 'Cahiers du Cinema.' The only difference is that instead of writing criticism, I now film it.

 * Movies are a world of Fragments.

 * I make film to make time pass.

 * It’s not where you take things from-it’s where you take them to.

 * Up to now...since shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution...most movie makers have been assuming that they know how to make movies. Just like a bad writer doesn't ask himself if he's really capable of writing a novel...he thinks he knows. If movie makers were building airplanes, there would be an accident every time one took off. But in the movies, these accidents are called Oscars.

 * I don't think you should feel about a movie. You should feel about a woman. You can't kiss a movie.

 * A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

 * Film is like a personal diary, a notebook or a monologue by someone who tries to justify himself before a camera.

 * There is no point in having sharp images when you've fuzzy ideas.

 * Every edit is a lie.

 * What I want above all is to destroy the idea of culture. Culture is an alibi of imperialism. There is a Ministry of War. There is a Ministry of Culture. Therefore, culture is war.

 * [speaking at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival about filmmaker Michael Moore]: Post-war filmmakers gave us the documentary, Rob Reiner gave us the mockumentary and Moore initiated a third genre, the crockumentary.[Godard had not actually seen Michael Moore's film at the time. - this is irrelevant, since he was commenting on his whole style of filmmaking]

 * "To be or not to be. That's not really a question."

 * "This is not a just image, this is just an image."

 * "Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho." " I am a Marxist of the Groucho variety." This quote comes the May 1968 student revolution in France. See that article for details. [Which article is "that" article?? Please add a link to it.]

 * "Cinema is the domain of rich white guys"

all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun (... a gun and a girl)
„All over the internet and in scholarly works, the phrase 'all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun' is attributed to Jean-Luc Godard, and that despite his insistence that 'c'est Griffith qui a dit ça, ce n'est pas moi' ('it was Griffith who said that, not me').“, the late Roland François Lack wrote in thecinetourist.net. He collected lot of material proving that D. W. Griffith said that in the early 1920s already. Godard only cited that sentence - sometimes more seriously, sometimes more ironiqually. May I delete it as originally coming from Godard ? Jameskrug (talk) 19:18, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Jean-Luc Godard


text:
User:Paul A

Paul A spends most of his time at the English Wikipedia, and you can see his user page there for more information.

title: User:Paul A


text:
Groucho Marx

Julius Henry Marx (2 October 1890 – 19 August 1977), known as Groucho Marx, was an American comedian and actor known as a member of the Marx Brothers comedy act and for his solo film and television career.

Quotes

 * A likely story — and probably true.
 * The Al Jolson Show repartee following a trite, scripted Al Jolson joke. (1949)

 * Although it is generally known, I think it's about time to announce that I was born at a very early age.
 * From his autobiography Groucho and Me (1959)

 * I sent the club a wire stating, "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER".
 * Telegram to the Friar's Club of Beverly Hills to which he belonged, as recounted in Groucho and Me (1959), p. 321
 * [Variant:] "Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member".
 * As quoted in The Groucho Letters (1967) by Arthur Sheekman. The sentiment predates Marx by 61 years, however; it likely originated with John Galsworthy in The Forsyte Saga. In Part I, Chapter II, "Old Jolyon Goes to the Opera", it's said of Old Jolyon that, "He naturally despised the Club that did take him." after another refused him because he was in a trade.
 * See also

 * No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.
 * From his book Groucho and Me. It is a variation of a maxim by 17th-century French nobleman François de La Rochefoucauld: "In the adversity of our best friends, we often find something that is not displeasing." (Maxim 99 from Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1665 edition.)

 * Here's to our wives and girlfriends... may they never meet! (Variation on an old Royal Navy wardroom toast: "Wives and Sweethearts! May they never meet!")

 * From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.
 * To S. J. Perelman about his book Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1929), as quoted in LIFE (9 February 1962)

 * I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
 * Quote by Leo Rosten in The Many Worlds of Leo Rosten (1964)

 * They say Allen got something from the Marx Brothers. He got nothing. Maybe twenty years ago, he might have been inspired. Today he's an original. The best, the funniest.
 * On Woody Allen, in an interview with Roger Ebert in Esquire magazine (7 March 1972)

 * I got $25 from Reader's Digest last week for something I never said. I get credit all the time for things I never said. You know that line in You Bet Your Life? The guy says he has seventeen kids and I say: "I smoke a cigar, but I take it out of my mouth occasionally"? I never said that.
 * Interview with Roger Ebert in Esquire magazine (7 March 1972); more on this at Snopes.com: "I Love My Cigar"

 * I like pancakes, but I haven't got a closet full of them!
 * Groucho's actual response during one of You Bet Your Life episodes referred to in the above quote.

 * I did a bond tour during the Second World War... We were raising money, and we played Boston and Philadelphia and most of the big cities. And we got to Minneapolis. There wasn't any big theater to play there, so we did our show in a railroad station. Then I told the audience that I knew a girl in Minneapolis. She was also known in St.Paul, she used to come over to visit me. She was known as "The Tail Of Two Cities." I didn't sell any more bonds, but eh... they didn't allow me to appear anymore.
 * Recounting a War Bonds tour in his Carnegie Hall appearance (6 May 1972)

 * My experience is that people are most likely to listen to reason when in bed.
 * Liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972) the recording of his appearance at Carnegie Hall.

 * Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication.
 * The Groucho Phile (1976), p. 308

 * I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
 * As quoted in Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984) by Leslie Halliwell

 * To write an autobiography of Groucho Marx would be as asinine as to read an autobiography of Groucho Marx.
 * Just after completing his second autobiography, as quoted in The Marx Brothers: A Bio-bibliography (1987) by Wes D. Gehring, p. 137

 * Die, my dear? Why that's the last thing I'll do!
 * Last words
 * Lord Palmerston had similar last words in 1865: "Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do!"

Misattributed

 * I don't have a photograph. I'd give you my footprints, but they're upstairs in my socks.
 * From at least as early as 1977 (e.g. "Comedy's King Leer," Newsweek, 29 Aug 1977, p. 44), this has frequently been characterized as a real-life response given by Marx himself to enquiring reporters; in fact, it's a slight variation on this scripted passage—"Why ... I haven't got one. I could give you my footprints, but they're upstairs in my socks."—from A Day at the Races (1937), as found in A Day at the Races : Screenplay by, and  (1972), p. 29

 * I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.
 * Apparently said by Oscar Levant: "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin" (as quoted in The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood (1972) by Max Wilk).

 * Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
 * No known citation to Marx. First appears unattributed in mid-1960s logic/computing texts as an example of the difficulty of machine parsing of ambiguous statements. Google Books.  The Yale Book of Quotations (2006) dates the attribution to Marx to a 9 July 1982 net.jokes post on Usenet, although it has not been possible to locate a matching post in the Google Groups archives.

 * Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
 * As per research conducted by Quote Investigator, more than 25 years before its first in-print attribution to Marx, on April 5, 1973 (as "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. That's because inside a dog it's too dark to read"), the first appearance of this quote—as "Outside a horse, a book is man's best friend—inside it's too dark to read"—occurred in a May 31, 1947 newspaper column, where it is attributed to jockey.

 * Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.
 * Variant: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
 * Apparently attributed to Marx in Bennett Cerf's Try and Stop Me, first published in 1944. A citation of this can been seen in the Kentucky New Era on November 9, 1964.  Also attributed to Marx by Rand Paul in "The Long Stand," ch. 1 of Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to Unite America (New York, N. Y.: Center Street, 26 May 2015), p. 5.
 * The original quotation belongs to Sir Ernest Benn (Henry Powell Spring, What is Truth?, Orange Press, 1944, p. 31); a first known citation reportedly appears in the Springfield (MA) Republican on July 27, 1930.

Quotes about Marx

 * Some years back, after a childhood of preoccupation with comedy that led me to observing the styles of all the great comedians, I came to the conclusion that Groucho Marx was the best comedian this country ever produced. Now I am more convinced than ever that I was right. I can't think of a comedian who combined a totally original physical conception that was hilarious with a matchless verbal delivery. I believe there is a natural inborn greatness in Groucho that defies close analysis as it does with any genuine artist. He is simply unique in the same way that Picasso or Stravinsky are, and I believe his outrageous unsentimental disregard for order will be equally as funny a thousand years from now. In addition to all this, he makes me laugh.
 * Woody Allen on the liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972)

 * I admit it's not original, Mr. Marx. It's a line you used in Horse Feathers, which I assumed you ad-libbed. You didn't get a laugh with it either.
 * , circa 1938, responding to Marx's harsh assessment of the first words uttered to him by the then 19-year-old Brecher (i.e. "Meeting you is like a dream come true"); as quoted in "Marx Brothers Revolutionized Early Years of Film Comedy" by Brecher, Asbury Park Press (October 8, 1979)p. B3

 * Groucho appeals on so many levels at once that you could go nuts trying to figure out whether it's the funny movement, the incomparable tone of voice, what he is saying, or that keenly witty face that hits you the hardest. I swear that if he never existed, we would sense a lack in the world of comedy, like that planet in the solar system that astronomers say Ought to be there. For me he is The Master.
 * Dick Cavett on the liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972)

 * Groucho Marx is the only actor I ever allowed to ad-lib in a show I wrote. That was because I couldn't stop him.
 * George S. Kaufman on the liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972)

 * George Kaufman and I wrote a lot of funny lines for Groucho, some of which he occasionally used... but it was Groucho who by his innate sense of timing and his inimitable delivery, added the ingredient that brought the house down.
 * Morrie Ryskind on the liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972)

title: Groucho Marx


text:
User:Jredmond

Hi, I'm Jim. I am most active on the English Wikipedia, but I am also an OTRS admin.

 * w:en:User:Jredmond
 * m:User:Jredmond

title: User:Jredmond


text:
Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise is a 1995 drama/romance film about two strangers who spend a night walking in Vienna, and fall in love with each other.
 * Directed by Richard Linklater. Written by Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan.

When love can come as a complete surprise.taglines

Jesse

 * You know what drives me crazy? It's all these people talking about how great technology is, and how it saves all this time. But, what good is saved time, if nobody uses it? If it just turns into more busy work. You never hear somebody say, "With the time I've saved by using my word processor, I'm gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out". I mean, you never hear that.
 * I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. It's just usually it's myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, it's just they are sick to death of being around themselves. Let's say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it's made me feel like I'm somebody else.

Celine

 * If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed, but...who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.
 * I always feel this pressure of being a strong and independent icon of womanhood, and without making it look my whole life is revolving around some guy. But loving someone, and being loved means so much to me. We always make fun of it and stuff. But isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?
 * But then the morning comes, and we turn back into pumpkins, right?
 * When you talked earlier about after a few years how a couple would begin to hate each other by anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms-I think it would be the opposite for me. I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone-the way he's going to part his hair, which shirt he's going to wear that day, knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love.

Dialogue

 * Jesse: Alright, I have an admittedly insane idea, but if I don't ask you this it's just, uh, you know, it's gonna haunt me the rest of my life
 * Celine: What?
 * Jesse: Um... I want to keep talking to you, y'know. I have no idea what your situation is, but, uh, but I feel like we have some kind of, uh, connection. Right?
 * Celine: Yeah, me too.
 * Jesse: Yeah, right, well, great. So listen, so here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna, and come check out the capital.
 * Celine: What?
 * Jesse: Come on. It'll be fun. Come on.
 * Celine: What would we do?
 * Jesse: Umm, I don't know. All I know is I have to catch an Austrian Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 9:30 and I don't really have enough money for a hotel, so I was just going to walk around, and it would be a lot more fun if you came with me. And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get on the next train. Alright, alright. Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, y'know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me y'know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy.
 * Celine: Let me get my bag.

 * Celine: You know, I've been wondering lately. Do you know anyone who's in a happy relationship?
 * Jesse: Uh, yeah, sure. I know happy couples. But I think they lie to each other.
 * Celine: Hmf. Yeah. People can lead their life as a lie. My grandmother, she was married to this man, and I always thought she had a very simple, uncomplicated love life. But she just confessed to me that she spent her whole life dreaming about another man she was always in love with. She just accepted her fate. It's so sad.
 * Jesse: I guarantee you, it was better that way. If she'd ever got to know him, I'm sure he would have disappointed her eventually.
 * Celine: How do you know? You don't know them.
 * Jesse: Yeah, I know, I know. It's just, people have these romantic projections they put on everything. That's not based on any kind of reality.

 * Jesse: Do you believe in reincarnation?
 * Celine: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.
 * Jesse: Yeah, right. Well, most people, you know, a lot of people talk about past lives and things like that, you know? And even if they don't believe it in some specific way, you know, people have some kind of notion of an eternal soul, right?
 * Celine: Yeah.
 * Jesse: OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's, like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking...I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?
 * Celine: I don't know. Wait a minute, I'm not sure...I don't...
 * Jesse: Yeah, hang on, hang on. It's a, it's a totally scattered thought. It...which is kind of why it makes sense.

 * Jesse: I feel like this is, uh, some dream world we're in, y'know.
 * Celine: Yeah, it's so weird. It's like our time together is just ours. It's our own creation. It must be like I'm in your dream, and you in mine, or something.
 * Jesse: And what's so cool is that this whole evening, all our time together, shouldn't officially be happening.
 * Celine: Yeah, I know. Maybe that's why this feels so otherworldly.

 * Jesse: This friend of mine had a kid, and it was a home birth, so he was there helping out and everything. And he said at that profound moment of birth, he was watching this child, experiencing life for the first time, I mean, trying to take its first breath... all he could think about was that he was looking at something that was gonna die someday. He just couldn't get it out of his head. And I think that's so true, I mean, all - everything is so finite. But don't you think that that's what, makes our time, at specific moments, so important?
 * Celine: Yeah, I know. It's the same for us, tonight, though. After tomorrow morning, we're probably never going to see each other again, right? We, maybe we should try something different. I mean, it's no so bad if tonight is our only night, right? People always exchange phone numbers, addresses, they end up writing once, calling each other once or twice...
 * Jesse: Right. Fizzles out. Yeah, I mean, I don't want that. I hate that.
 * Celine: I hate that too, y'know.
 * Jesse: Why do you think everybody thinks relationships are supposed to last forever anyway?
 * Celine: Yeah, why? It's stupid.

 * Celine: I don't think we should sleep together. I mean, I want to, but since we're never gonna see each other again, it will make me feel bad. I'll wonder who else you're with. I'll miss you. [pause] I know. It's not very adult. Maybe it's a female thing. I can't help it.
 * Jesse: Let's see each other again.

 * Poet:哎，（用德语）
 * Celine: 我理解一点（德语），但他完全不懂.
 * Poet:哦. 我可以问你们一个问题吗？
 * Celine: 是？
 * Poet:我想与你们做个交易. 我的意思是，我并不是向你们讨钱，而是请你给我一个词. 你们给我一个词，然后我写首诗，这个词在诗中. 如果你们喜欢，如果你们喜欢我的诗，如果它为你们的生活增加了点什么，那么你们可以随便给我点钱. 当然我会用英文写.
 * Celine: 好的.
 * Jesse:很好，
 * Poet:来吧，选个词.
 * Celine: 一个词，奶昔.
 * Jesse:奶昔，哦，好. 我想说“好斗的公鸡”，但奶昔也不错.
 * Poet:奶昔？好的，就奶昔.
 * Jesse:好
 * Celine: 很好.
 * Jesse:我想说，我喜欢维也纳的无业游民.
 * Celine: 我喜欢他说的“给你们的生活增加点什么”.
 * Jesse:那么，我们是不是在这里停止我们的首次争执？
 * Celine: 我想是的，我们应该这样. 但为什么每个人都认为冲突是坏的？冲突可以带来很多好东西呀.
 * Jesse:是，我也这样想. 我总是认为，如果我能够接受现实，比如大家一般认为的生活是艰苦的，那么我将可能不再那么生气. 我只会为好事而高兴.
 * Celine: 这正是我还在学校的原因. 在学校里更容易抵抗某些东西.
 * Jesse:对，我们都有这种根深蒂固的征服欲. 你知道，我在做些最无意义的事，比如投飞镖，或打靶，但突然，我觉得它来了，我必须要赢.
 * Celine: 那是你让我下车的原因吗？征服欲？
 * Jesse:什么意思？
 * Poet:诗写好了
 * Jesse:（接过写着诗的纸片）哦，好.
 * Celine: （把纸片还给诗人）你能念给我们听吗？
 * Poet:当然. 骗人的白日梦 汽车的睫毛 哦，孩子，你可爱的脸庞，滴一滴泪在我的酒杯.  看着这些大眼睛，明白你对我意味着什么 ——蛋糕与奶昔 我是骗人的天使 我是幻想的乐园 我希望你了解我，不要瞎猜.  你不知道我来自何处 我们不知道我们走向何处.   人生在世， 如水中浮萍， 顺流而下，相遇在水流中 我带着你 你带着我， 我们只能这样.  你不了解我吗？ 你到现在还不了解我吗？

Taglines

 * When love can come as a complete surprise.
 * Can the greatest romance of your life last only one night?
 * 浮生若梦，唯独缠绵一晚为实，梦醒皆虚

Cast

 * Ethan Hawke - Jesse
 * Julie Delpy - Celine
 * Dominik Castell - Street Poet

title: Before Sunrise