Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. — Stephen Hawking · Smartyfair

Leave without saving?

You have a change that hasn’t been saved yet. Clicking out of the box saves it — closing now throws that change away.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. — Stephen Hawking · Smartyfair

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet.

Stephen Hawking1942–2018 · scientist · 1900s-2000s EnglandStephen Hawking was a physicist who studied black holes and the origins of the universe, becoming one of the most famous scientists of his time.7 quotes

Source foundCuriosity

In plain words

Look up at the stars instead of down at your shoes.

Look up a word

look
stars
feet

Where these words come from

How sure this is: 85% sureThese words were traced back to where they first appeared. That source is listed below.
What turned up: Brief Answers to the Big Questions (2018) — closing passage of Hawking's final book, also related in a 2010 ABC interview with Diane Sawyer
Sources checked: en.wikipedia.orgChecked using claude-sonnet-5, 20 August 2026

Nothing made from these words yet — Storyfaire is where they get made.

More from Stephen Hawking

So if you feel you are in a black hole, don't give up. There's a way out.

Stephen Hawking

More on curiosity

There is very likely to be life in other solar systems, in planets around other stars.

Space

Living or modern

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

Stephen Hawking

Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible.

Stephen Hawking

We can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

Stephen Hawking

Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.

Stephen Hawking

So next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing.

Stephen Hawking

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.

Carl Sagan

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

I don't study to know more, but to ignore less.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

William Shakespeare

We live in a beautiful and wonderful world, and the more you know about it the wiser and the better you will be.

Louisa May Alcott