Michael Crichton Quotes

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact.

G.K. Chesterton said (in a somewhat different context), “If you believe in nothing, you’ll believe in anything.” That

The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepreneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations that all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research—or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science.

He finally decided that children liked dinosaurs because these giant creatures personified the uncontrollable force of looming authority. They were symbolic parents.

Crocodiles are basically Triassic animals living in the present. Sharks are Triassic. So we know it has happened before.

All human behavior has a reason. All behavior is solving a problem.

I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it.

The cabbie laughed. "All right, mister. A guy can tell when he's being kidded." Sometimes," Jencks said, "but only sometimes.

Extrapolating from the statistical growth of the legal profession, by the year 2035 every single person in the United States will be a lawyer, including newborn infants.

The purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in nature — all it tries to do is stay alive. It doesn't care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever any animal's behavior puts it out of touch with the realities of its existence, it becomes exinct.

Unaccustomed to direct experience, we can come to fear it. We don't want to read a book or see a museum show until we've read the reviews so that we know what to think. We lose the confidence to perceive ourselves. We want to know the meaning of an experience before we have it. We become frightened of direct experience, and we will go to elaborate lengths to avoid it.

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people — the best people, the most enlightened people — do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

"On the video monitor, they saw Ted Fielding slap the polished sphere and shout, "Open! Open Sesame! Open up, you son of a bitch!"

The sphere did not respond."

The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.

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