Michael Crichton Congo Quotes

A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds ... this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics. ~ Michael Crichton

A third reason scientists are reluctant to examine paranormal phenomena is that they appear to contradict known physical laws. What is the point of studying the impossible? Only a fool would waste his time. The problem of data in conflict with existing theory cannot be overstated. Arthur Eddington once said you should never believe any experiment until it has been confirmed by theory, but this humorous view has a reality that cannot be discounted. ~ Michael Crichton

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. ~ Michael Crichton

The Thematic Apperception Test was a psychological test that consisted of a series of ambiguous pictures. Subjects were supposed to tell what they thought was happening in the pictures. Since no clear story was implied by the pictures, the subjects supplied the stories. And the stories told much more about the storytellers than about the pictures. ~ Michael Crichton

The romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die. ~ Michael Crichton

In reality, time doesn't pass; we pass. Time itself is invariant. It just is. Therefore, past and future aren't separate locations, the way New York and Paris are separate locations. And since the past isn't a location, you can't travel to it. ~ Michael Crichton

One of the most difficult features of direct experince is that it is unfiltered by any theories or expectations. It's hard to observe without imposing a theory to explain what we're seeing, but the trouble with theories, as Einstein said, is that they explain not only what is observed, but what can be observed. We start to build expectations based on our theories. ~ Michael Crichton

Kids didn't have huge backpacks when I was their age. We didn't have backpacks at all. Now it seemed all the kids had them. You saw little second-graders bent over like sherpas, dragging themselves through the school doors under the weight of their packs. Some of the kids had their packs on rollers, hauling them like luggage at the airport. I didn't understand any of this. The world was becoming digital; everything was smaller and lighter. But kids at school lugged more weight than ever. ~ Michael Crichton

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

Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once ~ Michael Crichton

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. ~ Michael Crichton

The computer system is secure. ~ Michael Crichton

Grant liked kids - it was impossible not to like any group so openly enthusiastic about dinosaurs. Grant used to watch kids in museums as they stared open-mouthed at the big skeletons rising above them. He wondered what their fascination really represented. He finally decided that children liked dinosaurs because these giant creatures personified the uncontrollable force of looming authority. They were symbolic parents. Fascinating and frightening, like parents. And kids loved them, as they loved their parents. ~ Michael Crichton

Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties. ~ Michael Crichton

Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it's your power. It can't be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline.

Now what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of getting the you so that you won't abuse it.
But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast.
There is no discipline lasting many decades. There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature. There is only a get-rich-quick, make-a-name-for-yourself-fast philosophy.
Cheat, lie, falsify--it doesn't matter. Not to you, or to your colleagues. No one will criticize you. No one has any standards. They all trying to do the same thing: to do something big, and do it fast.
"And because you can stand on the shoulder ~ Michael Crichton

When I sit down in front of a Windows machine, I can't write; when I sit down in front of my Mac, I can write. So I only use Macs. ~ Michael Crichton

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. ~ Michael Crichton

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. ~ Michael Crichton

About all we can hope to do is blow them apart. ~ Michael Crichton

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. ~ Michael Crichton

There are no pirates in Port Royal ~ Michael Crichton

It's marked as an object," Wu said. In computer terminology, an "object" was a block of code that could be moved around and used, the way you might move a chair in a room. ~ Michael Crichton

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause. ~ Michael Crichton

The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The ~ Michael Crichton

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

Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way. Malcolm ~ Michael Crichton

The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. ~ Michael Crichton

I believe the experiences reported in this book are reproducible by anyone who wishes to try.
I went to Africa. You can go to Africa. You may have trouble arranging the time or the money, but everybody has trouble arranging something. I believe you can travel anywhere if you want to badly enough.
And I believe the same is true of inner travel. You don't have to take my word about chakras or healing energy or auras. You can find about them for yourself if you want to. Don't take my word for it.
Be as skeptical as you like.
Find out for yourself. ~ Michael Crichton

Animals die, friends die, and I shall die, but one thing never dies, and that is the reputation we leave behind at our death. ~ Michael Crichton

Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase. ~ Michael Crichton

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. ~ Michael Crichton

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

Like all trial attorneys, he knew the importance of not dressing too well. ~ Michael Crichton

Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done, And if they are smart, they'll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly. ~ Michael Crichton

You can't get decent Mexican food in DC. ~ Michael Crichton

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. ~ Michael Crichton

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. ~ Michael Crichton

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. ~ Michael Crichton

We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us. ~ Michael Crichton

But now science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways
air, and water, and land
because of ungovernable science. ~ Michael Crichton

The risk is too great. A man cannot place too much faith in any one thing, neither a woman, nor a horse, nor a weapon, nor any single thing. ~ Michael Crichton

Absence of proof is not proof of absence. ~ Michael Crichton

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

Theories are just fantasies. And they change. ~ Michael Crichton

Personally, I don't deal much in theory. I have to deal with the facts. And on the basis of facts, I don't see much difference in the behavior of men and women. ~ Michael Crichton

In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. ~ Michael Crichton