“[on the possibility of contact with an alien civilization]: …”

“[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.”

— Stephen Hawking

Verification

Attributed

Recorded by a reliable secondary source; exact wording may differ.

Imported from Wikiquote; not yet checked by QuoteQuest against the original source.

Source

Title: Wikiquote: Stephen Hawking
Type: reference · Secondary source
Held by: Wikiquote

View source at Wikiquote

Context

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)

Cite this source

Hawking, Stephen. (n.d.). Wikiquote: Stephen Hawking. Wikiquote. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

Check citations against your institution's style guide; some details may be missing.

Provenance: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA)