Stephen Hawking — "Wrong again, Albert."
Wrong again, Albert.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Stephen Hawking
"I believe that the human race has a great future ahead of it, if we can avoid destroying ourselves."
"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."
"We are all driven by a desire to understand the universe."
"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 think that the universe is a beautiful and complex place, and I'm very lucky to be able to study it."
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.
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: gemini
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
With playful confidence, this quote challenges the idea that even the greatest minds are infallible. It expresses the core engine of science: progress means correcting predecessors, regardless of their stature. Rather than reverence freezing inquiry, it suggests intellectual courage to declare genius can be wrong. The casual tone makes it radical—treating Einstein not as a sacred authority but as a fellow scientist who got some things demonstrably mistaken.
Relevance to Stephen Hawking
Hawking's entire career involved extending and overturning Einstein's intuitions. Einstein insisted 'God does not play dice,' rejecting quantum mechanics, but Hawking's 1974 discovery of Hawking radiation proved quantum effects reshape black holes Einstein thought were purely classical. Einstein doubted black holes were real; Hawking made them his life's work. Confined to a wheelchair by ALS yet rewriting physics, Hawking delivered such corrections with characteristic wit and zero deference.
The era
From the 1970s onward, physics faced its central crisis: Einstein's general relativity and quantum mechanics couldn't be reconciled. String theory, loop quantum gravity, and the Standard Model all probed beyond Einstein's classical framework. Hawking radiation in 1974 was the era's landmark—showing quantum effects operate at black hole event horizons, directly challenging Einstein's classical picture. The era also saw growing cultural veneration of Einstein, making Hawking's irreverent correction carry deliberate provocation.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].