Top 15 Fred Hoyle Quotes

One could conceive of other abstract systems, the consequences of which could be calculated, without it being necessary to provide a realization in actual material terms. We can conceive of other universes without those universes being compelled to exist. This indeed is the business of the pure mathematician.

There is an important difference between an advance in science and achievements in the humanities. A great musician consumes intellectual capital, he does not supply it, or at least it is usual for him to consume more than he creates. It has been impossible to use the motto theme of the Fifth Symphony after Beethoven used it. In science, on the other hand, the situation is the other way round. A breakthrough invariably opens up more new problems to be solved. A Newton or an Einstein may leave the world with a century or more of clearing up to be done.

But only gradually have I learned that such ultimate successes are not what the present-day authorities in Britain really want. What really delights them is extreme tidiness combined with a façade of everyday competence. This of course is why Britain plunges further and further downhill with every passing year. The truth is the opposite: it is the ultimate success that really counts.

The correct procedure I am sure it is to learn by doing, not by being told what to do. The notion that one can learn by attending a course of lectures is as absurd as the notion that the way to learn to ride a bicycle would be to hire someone to ride it for you, and to sit hour after hour watching him. The only reason for attending a lecture is to acquire hints as to the right method of tackling some particular problem or other. And this would be almost unnecessary in a properly designed and graded system of examples.

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.

Of all the backgrounds it seems to me that the typical suburban community must be by far the worst. The child’s parents have already compromised with life by living in such a place. It would be far better from the child’s point of view to be raised in an actual slum. The danger is, of course, that the child quickly comes to regard comfort as the number one priority.

My education was still full of holes, which I made a resolve to fill. I am still trying to carry it out.

There is no room in these streamlined days for such artistry. Everything is now decided by rule and rote, but this is one of the reasons why England is no longer in the great country she used to be.

There is no substitute for continuous endeavor. Of course all older men have good intentions, they have every wish “to keep up.” But the endless calls of students and committees and the ceaseless ringing of the telephone can defeat the best intentions. Only very recently I myself summoned the courage to deal with the problem. My solution is to answer only essential letters, entirely to ignore the telephone, and to restrict severely my participation in committee meetings. In modern ant-like society, with its penchant for excreting mountains of trivial literature, it needs an enormous determination to follow these simple precepts.

His new leisure also afforded my father the opportunity of indulging another of his favorite occupations—talking. There was a great deal of talk in our house, which had two effects on me: one, that I learned not to listen when I don’t want to listen; and the other, an aversion to talking.

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.

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.

My cast of mind is a very bad handicap in this age of the committee. My true thoughts when I sit on a committee are so grotesquely at variance with the business in hand that they simply cannot be expressed at all. I am overwhelmed by the fatuity of most of what is being said, and there is a constant parade in my mind of the pathetic political figures of the first third of the present century.

Quite recently I was asked to write an article to be entitled, “How to Become a Good Scientist.” In communicating my refusal to the periodical in question I was tempted to end the argument in one sentence, “By not writing articles such as this,” and then demanding my fee.

I am often asked what it is like to be a scientist and how one goes about being a scientist. I find such questions uncomfortable because I know of no nicely potted answers to them. It is necessary to dig deep into one’s own experience to produce anything like a worthwhile assessment. And this is to risk the perils of autobiography, usually so fascinating to the narrator and so boring to the reader.