Michael Crichton Quotes (33 Quotes)

Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science.

God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, man brings back dinosaurs.

Grant knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years - the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died.

He prays because he knows he doesn't control it. He's at the mercy of it.

I believe my life has value, and I don't want to waste it thinking about clothing . . . I don't want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports

Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.

Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet - or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.

Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they're not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.

People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.

The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.

You know what's wrong with scientific power? It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.

You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct.

All major changes are like death. You can't see to the other side until you are there.

You've never heard of Chaos theory? Non-linear equations? Strange attractors? Ms. Sattler, I refuse to believe you're not familiar with the concept of attraction.

And entertainment has nothing to do with reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality.

And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.

Discovery is always rape of the natural world. Always.

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

We all live every day in virtual environments, defined by our ideas.

Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Scientific power is like inherited wealth attained without discipline. You read about what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast.

I tended to faint when I saw accident victims in the emergency ward, during surgery, or while drawing blood.

The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief.

Readers probably haven't heard much about it yet, but they will. Quantum technology turns ordinary reality upside down.

They are focused on whether they can do something. They never think whether they should do something.

In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought.

It's not easy to cut through a human head with a hacksaw.

They told me not to move and I did what they said. I didn't move an inch, not with that gun pointed at my head.

The trauma wasn't just from the robbery. It was almost as bad having a lot of reporters chasing me day and night asking for details. ... These guys camped on my lawn for a few days and wouldn't leave me alone.

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

If true computer music were ever written, it would only be listened to by other computers.

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.

If you don't know your family's history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree