Top 300 Michael Crichton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Keep working. Don’t wait for inspiration. Work inspires inspiration. Keep working.”

— Michael Crichton

Featured in: Hard Work Quotes, Excellence Quotes, Positive Work Quotes, Quotes About Trying

2. “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”

— Michael Crichton

Featured in: History Quotes, Family Quotes

3. “Life will find a way.”

— Michael Crichton

Featured in: Adaptability Quotes, Survival Quotes

4. “All human behavior has a reason. All behavior is solving a problem.”

— Michael Crichton

5. “Social control is best managed through fear.”

— Michael Crichton

6. “Everyone has a hidden agenda. Except me!”

— Michael Crichton

7. “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

8. “The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

— Michael Crichton

9. “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

10. “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

11. “In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought.”

— Michael Crichton

12. “Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.”

— Michael Crichton

13. “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”

— Michael Crichton

14. “All major changes are like death. You can’t see to the other side until you are there.”

— Michael Crichton

15. “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

16. “It’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.”

— Michael Crichton

17. “You can answer your own question. You already know the answer, if you can just gain access to it.”

— Michael Crichton

18. “At forty, I was too old to work as a programmer myself anymore; writing code is a young person’s job.”

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

20. “Even if you don’t believe in God, 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.”

— Michael Crichton

21. “If you gamble long enough, you’ll always lose – the gambler is always ruined.”

— Michael Crichton

22. “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

23. “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.”

— Michael Crichton

24. “Writing a book is a bit like going on location for a movie. You’re absent from your life, your family, and your friends. You’re psychologically gone, so you might as well be physically gone.”

— Michael Crichton

25. “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

26. “The people in Hollywood are fabulously stupid.”

— Michael Crichton

27. “At the edge of chaos, unexpected outcomes occur. The risk to survival is severe.”

— Michael Crichton

28. “Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other.”

— Michael Crichton

29. “Harassment is about power – the undue exercise of power by a superior over a subordinate.”

— Michael Crichton

30. “In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.”

— Michael Crichton

31. “Nobody dares to solve the problems-because the solution might contradict your philosophy, and for most people clinging to beliefs is more important than succeeding in the world.”

— Michael Crichton

32. “Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.”

— Michael Crichton

33. “I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”

— Michael Crichton

34. “Let’s be clear: 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.”

— Michael Crichton

35. “God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, man brings back dinosaurs.”

— Michael Crichton

36. “Men under stress are fools, and fool themselves.”

— Michael Crichton

37. “Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.”

— Michael Crichton

38. “All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.”

— Michael Crichton

39. “Morality must keep up with technology because if a person is faced with the choice of being moral and dead or immoral and alive, they’ll choose life everytime.”

— Michael Crichton

40. “Cut off from direct experience, cut off from our own feelings and sometimes our own sensations, we are only too ready to adopt a viewpoint or perspective that is handed to us, and is not our own.”

— Michael Crichton

41. “That’s human nature. Nobody does anything until it’s too late.”

— Michael Crichton

42. “Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet – or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”

— Michael Crichton

43. “We all live every day in virtual environments, defined by our ideas.”

— Michael Crichton

44. “What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. 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, and the characteristic result is religious warfare.”

— Michael Crichton

45. “In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.”

— Michael Crichton

46. “Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.”

— Michael Crichton

47. “Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.”

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

49. “Exercise invigorates the body and sharpens the mind.”

— Michael Crichton

50. “Auschwitz exists because of politicized science.”

— Michael Crichton