We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
Stephen HawkingRead
The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.
Interpretation
Intelligent individuals may be misunderstood by those with less understanding.
This quote by Stephen Hawking highlights the disconnect that often exists between levels of intelligence. It suggests that the perspectives and ideas of highly intelligent individuals may seem strange or unorthodox to those who do not have the same depth of understanding, thereby illustrating the challenge of communication across different intellectual levels.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of embracing unconventional ideas.
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.
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.
It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.
I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.
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. Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein: TIME's Person of the Century.
In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.
Men develop ideas and systems of explanation by absorbing past knowledge and critiquing and superseding it. Women, ignorant of their own history [do] not know what women before them had thought and taught. So generation after generation, they [struggle] for insights others had already had before them, [resulting in] the constant inventing of the wheel.
You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties, for want of occasions for frittering your life away in silly trifles.
Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.
The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.
My behavior is a product of my own conscious choices based on principles, rather than a product of my conditions, based on feelings.
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