Stephen Hawking — "In the proof stage, I nearly cut that last sentence of the book. Had I done so, …"
In the proof stage, I nearly cut that last sentence of the book. Had I done so, the sales might have been halved.
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More from Stephen Hawking
"I believe that there is no heaven or afterlife. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
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About Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)
British theoretical physicist whose Hawking radiation work and A Brief History of Time (1988) brought black-hole physics to a mass audience while he lived with ALS for 55 years. Closely associated with Roger Penrose (his collaborator on singularity theorems) and Carl Sagan (fellow popularizer who wrote Brief History's foreword). For an intellectual contrast, see William Lane Craig, American philosopher of religion — Craig's Kalam cosmological argument depends on the Big Bang requiring a divine first cause; Hawking's no-boundary proposal was specifically designed to remove the moment that would require one — the cleanest cosmology-vs-natural-theology contrast in modern thought.
Details
Referring to the last sentence of 'A Brief History of Time' ('Then we would know the mind of God')
Date: Approx. 1988 (publication year of A Brief History of Time)
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Hawking reflects on how one sentence can determine a book's commercial fate. The final line of A Brief History of Time — 'For then we would know the mind of God' — became iconic, blending physics with cosmic wonder. He nearly deleted it during final proofing. Even the most analytical minds recognize emotional resonance drives mass appeal: a single evocative phrase can be the difference between a bestseller and a merely successful book.
Relevance to Stephen Hawking
Hawking built his reputation bridging dense theoretical physics and public understanding. Despite communicating through a speech synthesizer as ALS progressed, he crafted A Brief History of Time for general readers — selling over 10 million copies. His willingness to invoke 'the mind of God' shows calculated intuition: he understood audiences hungered for science connected to existential meaning. This quote reveals his rare dual gift as both rigorous scientist and savvy popular communicator.
The era
Published in 1988, A Brief History of Time arrived as Cold War tensions eased and curiosity about fundamental physics surged publicly. The decade saw science popularization accelerate — Carl Sagan had proven mass audiences craved cosmological wonder. Religious and secular worldviews were actively contested in Western culture. Hawking's 'mind of God' closing resonated deeply in that climate, tapping collective hunger for reconciliation between scientific rationalism and larger existential meaning at a pivotal cultural moment.
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