Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties. Michael Crichton More Quotes by Michael Crichton More Quotes From Michael Crichton Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel! Michael Crichton patriotismsafetylasts Science can't tell you why anything happens. Michael Crichton things-happenhappens The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. Michael Crichton single-lifeliteratureyears I hadn't traveled with the intention of learning about anything except myself. And the real point of all this travel was not what I had come to believe or disbelieve about the wider world, but what I had learned about myself. Michael Crichton realbelieveworld Yes, you have cancer. Yes, your kids are on drugs. Yes, there is an elephant outside your tent. Now the question becomes, What are you going to do about it? Subsequent emotions may not be pleasant, but the hysteria stops. Hysteria accompanies an unwillingness to look at what is really going on; it promotes an unwillingness to look. We feel we are afraid to look, when actually it is not-looking that makes us afraid. The minute we look, we cease being afraid. Michael Crichton cancerelephantskids You can answer your own question. You already know the answer, if you can just gain access to it. Michael Crichton gainsanswersknows In truth, one of our company, the solemn warrior Ecthgow, was so demented from liquor that he was drunk while still upon his horse, and he fell attempting to dismount. Now the horse kicked him in the head, and I feared for his safety, but Ecthgow laughed and kicked the horse back. Michael Crichton warriorhorsestrength The fact that the patients were complex human beings with a rich life beyond the hospital never really sank into the consciousness of the residents. Because they had no rich lives beyond the hospital, they assumed no one else did, either. In the end, what they lacked was not medical knowledge but ordinary life experience. Michael Crichton medical-knowledgerich-lifefacts People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense. Michael Crichton walldefensepeople Real life isn't a series of interconnected events occurring one after another - like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way. Michael Crichton encounterseventsreal The rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark. Michael Crichton rocksalivedark 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 politicalrealmean Auschwitz exists because of politicized science. Michael Crichton auschwitzpolitical Cure the symptoms, cure the disease. Michael Crichton symptomscancerdisease 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 airportskidsschool Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and instruments, but in the ened your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work. Michael Crichton preparationhard-workscience He prays because he knows he doesn't control it. He's at the mercy of it. Michael Crichton mercyprayingknows They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. They don't see the consequences. Michael Crichton jurassic-parksituationthinking Reality is always greater - much greater - than what we know, than whatever we can say about it. Michael Crichton knowslifereality Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications. Michael Crichton demandmathematicsfaces
