# We Cannot Wait for Darwinian Evolution by Stephen Hawking > "There is no time, to wait for Darwinian evolution, to make us more intelligent, and better natured." > **— Stephen Hawking**, *“Life in the Universe” lecture, 1996* ## Sources and Context - **Original source:** [Stephen Hawking Estate, “Life in the Universe” (1996)](https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/life-in-the-universe). The estate's transcript preserves Hawking's speech-synthesizer punctuation. He says this while discussing risks that could outrun slow biological evolution, then introduces the prospect of deliberate DNA changes. His prediction of self-design is not evidence that complex traits such as intelligence can already be engineered reliably; the lecture itself says their many-gene basis makes them much harder to alter than single-gene conditions. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Self-Directed Evolution|Self-Directed Evolution]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Stephen Hawking|Stephen Hawking]] - [[wiki/Self-Directed Evolution|Self-Directed Evolution]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "There is no time, to wait for Darwinian evolution, to make us more intelligent, and better natured." — Stephen Hawking, “Life in the Universe,” 1996 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-hawking-darwinian-evolution ```