The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.

Michael Crichton

Categorized in : Thinking Reality Challenges

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

Michael Crichton

done writing book

You think you can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. . . . . We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

Michael Crichton

vanity eye thinking

Working inspires inspiration. Keep working. If you succeed, keep working. If you fail, keep working. If you are interested, keep working. If you are bored, keep working.

Michael Crichton

bored inspiration inspire

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.

Michael Crichton

animal philosophy reality

Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

Michael Crichton

air inspirational life

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

jurassic-park may moving

Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes -- with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.

Michael Crichton

clothes experience taken

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

Michael Crichton

self fear thinking

The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking. Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It's all talk.

Michael Crichton

nice real two

It's better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.

Michael Crichton

fear inspirational death

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

Michael Crichton

scientist belief literature

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

Michael Crichton

matter way firsts

Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.

Michael Crichton

prejudice opinion science

Keep working. Don't wait for inspiration. Work inspires inspiration. Keep working.

Michael Crichton

inspiration waiting inspire

...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...there is no mastery, old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature...Its a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.

Michael Crichton

discipline humility people

Social control is best managed through fear.

Michael Crichton

social-control social fear

The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

Michael Crichton

fighting religious animal

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

animal world thinking

The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare.

Michael Crichton

warfare conformity religious

Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.

Michael Crichton

territory evolution way