Top 300 Michael Crichton Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “The characteristic of vision. That great sweeping act of imagination which evoked a marvelous park, where children pressed against the fences, wondering at the extraordinary creatures, come alive from their storybooks. Real vision. The ability to see the future. The ability to marshal resources to make that future vision a reality.”

— Michael Crichton

252. “Photographs provided a tangible reality to men who were far from home, fearful and tired; they were posed proofs of success, souvenirs to send to sweethearts and loved ones, or simply ways of remembering, of grasping a moment in a swift changing and uncertain world.”

— Michael Crichton

253. “Elena rushed forward, screaming, and the lizards fled into the darkness. But long before she reached the bassinet, she could see what had happened to the infant’s face, and she knew the child must be dead. The lizards scattered into the rainy night, chirping and squealing, leaving behind only bloody three-toed tracks, like birds.”

— Michael Crichton

254. “Understanding is a delaying tactic.”

— Michael Crichton

255. “Like all trial attorneys, he knew the importance of not dressing too well.”

— Michael Crichton

256. “And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don’t like to be reminded of how frail we are – how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended.”

— Michael Crichton

257. “We can talk in here.” Dodgson led him to a glass-walled superintendent’s booth, in the center of the building. The glass cut down the sound of the barking. But through the windows, they could look out at the rows of animals.”

— Michael Crichton

258. “They want the Indians eliminated, and the lands opened up to white settlers, but they don’t want anybody to get hurt in the process. That just ain’t possible.”

— Michael Crichton

259. “I am most heartily glad that I am not going to the dangerous and uncertain Black Hills.”

— Michael Crichton

260. “I was certain that some people, whether by accident of birth or some pecularity of training, could tune in to another source of information and could know things about people we didn’t think were possible to know.”

— Michael Crichton

261. “Sometimes agents were so influenced by one another that they lost track of their goal and did something else instead. In that sense, the program was very childlike, unpredictable and easily distracted. As one programmer put it – trying to program distributed intelligence is like telling a five year old kid to go to his room and change his clothes. He may do that, but he is equally likely to do something else and never return.”

— Michael Crichton

262. “The world was not how you wanted it to be. The world was how it was.”

— Michael Crichton

263. “It’s not a matter of wanting it or not, it’s a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect to control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn’t control it. He’s at the mercy of it.”

— Michael Crichton

264. “They have to leave their mark. They can’t just watch. They can’t just appreciate. They can’t just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist’s job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific... We’ve had four hundred years of modern science, and we ought to know by now what it’s good for, and what it’s not good for. It’s time for a change.”

— Michael Crichton

265. “Welcome to Westworld, where nothing can go wrong... go wrong... go wrong.”

— Michael Crichton

266. “When the first giant bones were found in the 1820s and 1830s, scientists felt obliged to explain the bones as belonging to some oversize variant of a modern species. This was because it was believed that no species could ever become extinct, since God would not allow one of His creations to die. Eventually it became clear that this conception of God was mistaken, and the bones belonged to extinct animals.”

— Michael Crichton

267. “But don’t you find it boring to wear only two colors?” “Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don’t want to waste it thinking about clothing,” Malcolm said. “I don’t want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports.”

— Michael Crichton

268. “The nasty little apes that call themselves human beings can do nothing except run and hide.”

— Michael Crichton

269. “Expectation works in mysterious ways – and totally unconsciously.”

— Michael Crichton

270. “It is especially difficult for modern people to conceive that our modern, scientific age might not be an improvement over the prescientific period.”

— Michael Crichton

271. “That dosent look dangerous it looks like a giant chiken.”

— Michael Crichton

272. “Eventually we hope to drive among the animals – just as they do in African game parks – but, for now, sit back and enjoy the self-guided tour.”

— Michael Crichton

273. “Your business is not hardware. Your business is communications. Your business is access to information.”

— Michael Crichton

274. “Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas.”

— Michael Crichton

275. “In the past, pure scientists took a snobbish view of business. They saw the pursuit of money as intellectually uninteresting, suited only to shopkeepers. And.”

— Michael Crichton

276. “Crocodiles are basically Triassic animals living in the present. Sharks are Triassic. So we know it has happened before.”

— Michael Crichton

277. “The computer system is secure.”

— Michael Crichton

278. “Grant knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years – the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died.”

— Michael Crichton

279. “But they’re not real now,” Wu said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There isn’t any reality here.”

— Michael Crichton

280. “Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place.”

— Michael Crichton

281. “I want a news service that tells me what no one knows but is true nonetheless.”

— Michael Crichton

282. “Sometimes I think everyone’s an attorney.”

— Michael Crichton

283. “But as a professor who was popular with his students – and who advocated general education – Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.”

— Michael Crichton

284. “Universities are no longer the intellectual centers of the country. The very idea is preposterous. Universities are the backwater. Don’t look so surprised. I’m not saying anything you don’t know. Since World War II, all the really important discoveries have come out of private laboratories.”

— Michael Crichton

285. “And Kelly was beginning to see that Sarah didn’t let anything stop her, she just went and did it. This whole attitude of not letting other people stop you, of believing that you could do what you wanted, was something she found herself imitating.”

— Michael Crichton

286. “Eddie said, “What is this, a salamander convention?”

— Michael Crichton

287. “It is an absurd expression of romantic hope.”

— Michael Crichton

288. “They got my glove,” Lex said. “My Darryl Strawberry special.” They started walking again. Tim put his arm around her shoulders. “Are you all right?” “Of course, stupid,” she said, shaking him off. She looked upward. “I hope they choke and die,” she said. “Yeah,” Tim said. “Me, too.”

— Michael Crichton

289. “The technician consulted the enclosed documents. “Lizard is biting local children. They have a question about identification of the species, and a concern about diseases transmitted from the bite.” She produced a child’s picture of a lizard, signed TINA at the top. “One of the kids drew a picture of the lizard.”

— Michael Crichton

290. “The truth was, the more he got portrayed as an unprincipled, ruthless prick, the more clients flocked to him. Because when it came to divorce, people wanted a ruthless prick. They lined up for one.”

— Michael Crichton

291. “There isn’t any delusion. It is absolutely clear that this body energy is a genuine phenomenon of some kind.”

— Michael Crichton

292. “Clearly, Valdez was an apologist for the industrialists and polluters, the big American companies that dominated Costa Rica and other Latin American countries. Not surprising to find such a person here, since the CIA had controlled Costa Rica for decades. This wasn’t a country; it was a subsidiary of American business interests. And American businesses did not give a damn for the environment.”

— Michael Crichton

293. “Free trade is meaningless unless there is also fair trade.”

— Michael Crichton

294. “When Ellie shook hands, Gennaro said in surprise, “You’re a woman.” “These things happen,” she said, and Grant thought: She doesn’t like him, either.”

— Michael Crichton

295. “Sitting in the deserted law offices, Sanders had the feeling that he was all alone in the world, with nobody but Fernandez and the encoraching darkness. Things were happening quickly; this person he had never met before today was fast becoming a kind of lifeline for him.”

— Michael Crichton

296. “The internal psychological pressure to make up a story, to explain the ruins before one’s eyes, is powerful indeed.”

— Michael Crichton

297. “Would you just check him? I’m pretty sure he’s dead.” “How do you know?” “He jumped from the twelfth floor. Would you just check him, make sure he’s dead?”

— Michael Crichton

298. “But now reporters came to the story with the lead fixed in their minds; they saw their job as proving what they already knew. They didn’t want information so much as evidence of villainy. In this mode, they were openly skeptical of your point of view, since they assumed you were just being evasive. They proceeded from a presumption of universal guilt, in an atmosphere of muted hostility and suspicion.”

— Michael Crichton

299. “You are the reason why he exists on this earth. You don’t have the right to abandon him just because he’s inconvenient or has trouble in school.”

— Michael Crichton

300. “Once again, vague terminology helped conceal what was really going on.”

— Michael Crichton