# Quote — Stephen W. Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions

> If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately. No government agency could afford to be seen to be spending public money on anything as way out as time travel. Instead one has to use technical terms like closed time-like curves, which are code for time travel.

- Author: [Stephen W. Hawking](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-w-hawking.md)
- Book: [Brief Answers to the Big Questions](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-w-hawking/brief-answers-to-the-big-questions.md)
- Page: 133
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Brief_Answers_to_the_Big_Questions_(2018)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-w-hawking/brief-answers-to-the-big-questions/if-one-made

## More from this book

> It is not even clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

p. 84 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-w-hawking/brief-answers-to-the-big-questions/it-is-not.md)

> If you like, you can call the laws of science 'God', but it wouldn't be a personal God that you would meet and put questions to. Although, if there were such a God, I would like to ask however did he think of anything as complicated as M-theory in eleven dimensions.

p. 36 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-w-hawking/brief-answers-to-the-big-questions/if-you-like.md)

> If a superior alien civilisation sent us a text message saying, 'We'll arrive in a few decades', would we just reply, 'OK, call us when you get here, we'll leave the lights on'? Probably not, but this is more or less what has happened with AI.

p. 188 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/stephen-w-hawking/brief-answers-to-the-big-questions/if-a-superior.md)