Michael Crichton Quotes

If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon-- you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks.

I believe my life has a 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?

But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.

Skeptical scientists often point out, as Carl Sagan has, that the wonders of real science far surpass the supposed wonders of fringe science. I think it is possible to invert that idea, and to say that the wonders of real consciousness far surpass what conventional science admits can exist.

As the practical value of altering consciousness becomes recognized, procedures to effect these alterations will become increasingly ordinary and unremarkable. The whole concept of changing states of consciousness will cease to have a threatening or exotic aspect.

In the end, it became clear that all scientists were participants in a participatory universe which did not allow anyone to be a mere observer.

Anyone who says he knows God's intention is showing a lot of very human ego.

His management philosophy, tempered in his rain-dancing days, was always to give the project to whoever had the most to gain from success--or the most to lose from failure.

You can't get decent Mexican food in DC.

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

A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer better fantasies... And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right.

Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

There's one problem with all psychological knowledge - nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained.

It's hard to decide who's truly brilliant; it's easier to see who's driven, which in the long run may be more important.

They are not free at all. They are essentially our prisoners.

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

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

What is your itinerary?""To meet my maker.""Ah. Well. You're in luck. And what do you want to say to your maker?""A most mechanical and dirty hand [laughs]. I shall have such revenges on you...both. The things I will do, what they are, yet I know not. But they will be the terrors of the earth. You don't know where you are, do you? You're in a prison of your own sins.

Sometimes I think everyone's an attorney.

Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it has been drunk.

Kids are more advanced these days. The teenage years now start at 11.

He did not want an affair with his boss. He did not even want a one-night stand. Because what always happened was that people found out, gossip at the water cooler, meaningful looks in the hallway. And sooner or later the spouses found out. It always happened. Slammed doors, divorce lawyers, child custody.

No one escapes from life alive.