Interview http://americanindian.net/asimov.html in Southwest Airlines Magazine 1979)
General sources
“[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”
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Stephen Hawking 122
British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author 1942–2018Related quotes
"Credo" (1991); also in Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! : Collected Essays, 1934-1998 (1999), p. 360
1990s
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 2: The Singing School
Referring to an aphorism of Martin Rees. (see Misattributed below)
Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 12 : The Fine Art of Baloney Detection, p. 221
Interview in Speaking of Science Fiction: The Paul Walker Interviews (1978)
Context: When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe. It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose. If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry — yours and mine — back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet. The same thing could be done for the spider that spun his web in the grass, and of the grass in which the web was spun, the bird sitting in the tree and the tree in which he sits, the toad waiting for the fly beneath the bush, and for the fly and bush. We are all genetic brothers. The chain of life, tracing back to that primordial day of life's beginning, is unbroken...
Source: How Mars might hold the secret to the origin of life https://www.ted.com/talks/nathalie_cabrol_how_mars_might_hold_the_secret_to_the_origin_of_life (March 2015)
Source: The Gay Science