Top 300 Michael Crichton Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Conventional wisdom is invariably out of date. Because in the time it has taken to become conventional – to become what everyone believes – the world has moved on. Conventional wisdom is a remnant of the past.”

— Michael Crichton

102. “It’s not easy to cut through a human head with a hacksaw.”

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

104. “Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It’s the most important thing that happens, and it’s the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.”

— Michael Crichton

105. “Thirty thousand years ago; when men were doing cave paintings at Lascaux, they worked twenty hours a week to provide themselves with food and shelter and clothing. The rest of the time, they could play, or sleep, or do whatever they wanted. And they lived in a natural world, with clean air, clean water, beautiful trees and sunsets. Think about it. Twenty hours a week.”

— Michael Crichton

106. “The doctor is not a miracle worker who can magically save us but, rather, an expert adviser who can assist us in our own recovery.”

— Michael Crichton

107. “In New Guinea, they had a disease called kuru, transmitted by eating the brains of their enemies.” “That’s not true.” “Gajdusek won a Nobel Prize for it. They were eating brains, all right.”

— Michael Crichton

108. “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

109. “They didn’t understand what they were doing. I’m afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.”

— Michael Crichton

110. “In evolutionary theory, this is called the Red Queen phenomenon,” Malcolm said. “Because in Alice in Wonderland the Red Queen tells Alice she has to run as fast as she can just to stay where she is. That’s the way evolutionary spirals seem. All the organisms are evolving at a furious pace just to stay in the same balance. To stay where they are.”

— Michael Crichton

111. “Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn’t true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and as misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly.”

— Michael Crichton

112. “Isla Nublar, Hammond explained, was not a true island. Rather, it was a seamount, a volcanic upthrusting of rock from the ocean floor. “Its volcanic origins can be seen all over the island,” Hammond said. “There are steam vents in many places, and the ground is often hot underfoot. Because of this, and also because of prevailing currents, Isla Nublar lies in a foggy area.”

— Michael Crichton

113. “The American media produce a product of very poor quality. Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it’s sold without warranty. It’s flashy, but it’s basically junk.”

— Michael Crichton

114. “Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!”

— Michael Crichton

115. “Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.”

— Michael Crichton

116. “In the corner store we pulled fat bottles of water from the shelves. No one thinks it’s weird that we have to buy clean water, and that’s how I know we’re going to hell.”

— Michael Crichton

117. “Chaos theory describes nonlinear systems. It’s now become a very broad theory that’s been used to study everything from the stock market to heart rhythms. A very fashionable theory. Very trendy to apply it to any complex system where there might be unpredictability.”

— Michael Crichton

118. “The extreme positions of the Crossfire Syndrome require extreme simplification – framing the debate in terms which ignore the real issues.”

— Michael Crichton

119. “Although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what humans really want to know is why things work. Children don’t ask how the sky is blue. They ask why the sky is blue.”

— Michael Crichton

120. “The system didn’t screw you. The system revealed you.”

— Michael Crichton

121. “Nobody is driven by abstractions like ’seeking truth.”

— Michael Crichton

122. “They can only live here in Jurassic Park. They are not free at all. They are essentially our prisoners.”

— Michael Crichton

123. “Increasingly, people perceive no difference between the narcissistic self-serving reporters asking questions, and the narcissistic self-serving politicians who evade them.”

— Michael Crichton

124. “Ian Malcolm, how do you do? I do maths.” He.”

— Michael Crichton

125. “If true computer music were ever written, it would only be listened to by other computers.”

— Michael Crichton

126. “Dr. Malcolm,” Hammond explained, “is a man of strong opinions.” “And mad as a hatter,” Malcolm said cheerfully. “But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn’t it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”

— Michael Crichton

127. “The very concept of time travel makes no sense, since time doesn’t flow. The fact that we think time passes is just an accident of our nervous systems – of the way things look to us. 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

128. “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

129. “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

130. “Anyone who says he knows God’s intention is showing a lot of very human ego.”

— Michael Crichton

131. “There is a problem with that island. It is an accident waiting to happen.”

— Michael Crichton

132. “We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.”

— Michael Crichton

133. “But as Alston Chase put it, “when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”

— Michael Crichton

134. “Dr. Grant, my dear Dr. Sattler... Welcome to Jurassic Park.”

— Michael Crichton

135. “When you have a strongly held belief, don’t you think it’s important to express that belief accurately?”

— Michael Crichton

136. “Life is too short, and DNA too long.”

— Michael Crichton

137. “Professor Johnston often said that if you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree.”

— Michael Crichton

138. “I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.”

— Michael Crichton

139. “We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.”

— Michael Crichton

140. “This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right.”

— Michael Crichton

141. “Nature was not gentle or nice. There was no such thing as mercy in the natural world. You don’t get any points for trying. You either survive or you don’t.”

— Michael Crichton

142. “You have to realize, all these decisions are about power. Sexual harassment is about power, and so is the company’s resistance to dealing with it.”

— Michael Crichton

143. “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

144. “Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear.”

— Michael Crichton

145. “I tended to faint when I saw accident victims in the emergency ward, during surgery, or while drawing blood.”

— Michael Crichton

146. “We cause our diseases. We are directly responsible for any illness that happens to us.”

— Michael Crichton

147. “When I get sick, I go to my doctor like everyone else. A doctor has powerful tools that may help me. Or those tools may hurt me, make me worse. I have to decide. It’s my life. It’s my responsibility.”

— Michael Crichton

148. “Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The.”

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

150. “Caring is irrelevant. Desire to do good is irrelevant. All that counts is knowledge and results.”

— Michael Crichton