Fred Hoyle Quotes

All people are pretty much alike, except in so far as ambition may change a man from a normal person into a machine or a monster.

I helped him willingly and most efficiently, the latter because I knew that if I did jobs cheerfully and badly I wouldn’t be asked too often.

It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned.

When I was young, the old regarded me as an outrageous young fellow, and now that I'm old the young regard me as an outrageous old fellow.

Assuming children and students do not wish to learn anything, then I suppose the present method of teaching is about right. It seems predicated on the notion that learning is an unpleasant medicine which must be swallowed at any price. But where a child is keen to learn, present methods seem woefully and even shockingly inadequate.

The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.

The concept here is that a highly organized society can collapse through a population overload, even though the people themselves are not starving. It is the organization that ultimately becomes overloaded and collapses.

I will say this for you, Chris. I never knew anyone who was better at finding work for other people.

It is in the world of ideas and in the relation of his brain to the universe itself that the superiority of Man lies. The rise of Man may justly be described as an adventure in ideas.

Ifs and buts are the stuff of politics, Mr. Parkinson. As a scientist I am concerned with facts not with motives, suspicions, and airy-fairy nothingness.

“But I can’t go along and gatecrash.”
“Nonsense, of course you can come—a guest from England! You’ll be the lion of the party. Probably half a dozen film moguls from Hollywood will want to sign you up on the spot.”
“All the more reason for not going,” said Kingsley.

A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

It’s only too easy to read your own state of mind into what other people say.

I'm still waiting to hear how I should have compromised. Are you sure that 'compromise' and 'capitulate' are not synonymous in your vocabulary?