Stephen Hawking — "Both of us."
Both of us.
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More from Stephen Hawking
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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
Response to John Oliver's follow-up question, 'But who's saying that, Stephen, you or the machine?'
Date: 2014
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The punchline to a joke: asked what he thinks about most, Hawking answered 'Women.' Asked what women think about, he replied 'Both of us.' It's a wry, self-confident quip asserting mutual attraction — a twist of ego dressed as modesty. The humor lands because it's unexpected: a man of pure intellect casually claiming romantic reciprocity, undercutting the 'unworldly genius' archetype with a very human punchline.
Relevance to Stephen Hawking
Hawking was married twice and fiercely refused to let ALS reduce him to a tragic figure. He cultivated sharp, self-deprecating wit as part of his public identity — appearing on Star Trek, The Simpsons, and talk shows. This joke reflects that exact persona: a man who faced total physical paralysis yet insisted on being seen as fully human, charming, and yes, attractive to women.
The era
From the 1980s onward, disability in popular culture was routinely coded as asexual or pitiable. Hawking's celebrity — supercharged by A Brief History of Time (1988) selling 10 million copies — gave him a platform to actively subvert that. In an era when disabled public figures rarely joked about desire, Hawking's casual wit on the topic was quietly radical, normalizing the idea that physical limitation doesn't erase romantic selfhood.
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