Top 300 Michael Crichton Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.”

— Michael Crichton

102. “Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.”

— Michael Crichton

103. “At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.” IAN MALCOLM.”

— Michael Crichton

104. “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

105. “Reptiles are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom; wherefore their Creator has not exerted his powers to make many of them.”

— Michael Crichton

106. “It’s hard to decide who’s truly brilliant; it’s easier to see who’s driven, which in the long run may be more important.”

— Michael Crichton

107. “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

108. “You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct.”

— Michael Crichton

109. “You’ve never heard of Chaos theory? Non-linear equations? Strange attractors? Ms. Sattler, I refuse to believe you’re not familiar with the concept of attraction.”

— Michael Crichton

110. “All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they’ll tell you will be wrong.”

— Michael Crichton

111. “You must first learn patience, if you wish to learn anything at all.”

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

113. “We need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead.”

— Michael Crichton

114. “Human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.”

— Michael Crichton

115. “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

116. “He prays because he knows he doesn’t control it. He’s at the mercy of it.”

— Michael Crichton

117. “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

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

— Michael Crichton

119. “A man can see by starlight, if he takes the time.”

— Michael Crichton

120. “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

121. “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

122. “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

123. “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

124. “If there’s anything worse than a limousine liberal,” Morton said, “it’s a Gulfstream environmentalist.”

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

126. “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

127. “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

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

— 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. “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

131. “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

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

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

134. “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

135. “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

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

— Michael Crichton

137. “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

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

— Michael Crichton

139. “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

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

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

142. “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

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

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

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

— Michael Crichton

146. “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

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

— Michael Crichton

148. “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

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

— Michael Crichton

150. “You can make a boat, but you can’t make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can’t make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.”

— Michael Crichton