Hawking: Everyone Looks Before Crossing the Road

The Quote

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined and that we can do nothing to change it look before they cross the road" is Stephen Hawking's wry observation about determinism, from the essay "Is Everything Determined?" (1990), collected in Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993). It is the most quoted of his remarks on free will.

Context

The essay grew out of a lecture Hawking delivered to the Sigma Club, a Cambridge science society, in April 1990. Hawking considers whether the laws of physics determine everything, including human action. His conclusion is that while the universe may be deterministic at the fundamental level, the complexity of the world — with its trillions of interacting particles — makes detailed prediction impossible, so that the "scientific determinism" of Laplace fails in practice. Human beings must therefore act as though their choices matter, and the joke about crossing the road makes the point: even the most committed determinist behaves as a chooser.

Meaning & Interpretation

The remark targets fatalism rather than determinism proper. If the future were fixed no matter what we do, then looking before crossing the road would be pointless — but everyone looks, and the looking makes a difference to whether one arrives. Determinism, on Hawking's account, does not imply that our actions are futile; it implies only that our actions are part of the lawful order. The joke also hints at a compatibilist moral: we cannot help treating ourselves as agents, and this practical stance is not refuted by the theoretical claim that the universe is law-governed.

Legacy

The line has become a staple of popular discussions of free will and determinism, quoted alongside Hawking's other sayings as the physicist's commonsense verdict on a philosophical problem. It echoes David Hume's compatibilism and the pragmatic tradition of William James, and it is regularly cited in debates about neuroscience and responsibility as the observation that even those who deny free will in theory act as though they have it in practice.

Sources

1. Hawking, S. (1993). Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays. Bantam Books; Archive.org.
2. Hoefer, C. (2016). "Causal Determinism." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
3. Ferguson, K. (2011). Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind. Palgrave Macmillan.
4. McKenna, M. & Coates, D. J. (2021). "Compatibilism." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/