Quotes from Michael Crichton

1840s, when Richard Owen first described giant bones in England, he named them Dinosauria: terrible lizards.

the waiter came, bringing the second course, pollo con ajillo, chicken with garlic. they would both stink frightfully when they were through, miss shaw thought; she would have to remember to buy some mints.

You arrogant little snot (John Hammond)

since they made bad headlines. As a result, people thought science was cut and dried, in a way that it never was. Even the most established concepts—like the idea that germs cause disease—were not as thoroughly proven as people believed.

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. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don't do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science.

That's a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true.

These considerations lead me to believe that the first human interaction with extraterrestrial life will consist of contact with organisms similar to, if not identical to, earth bacteria or viruses. The consequences of such contact are disturbing when one recalls that 3 per cent of all earth bacteria are capable of exerting some deleterious effect upon man.

Muzak played. He cupped his hand over the phone

Let's just say that in the ordinary world, we have beliefs about cause and effect. Causes occur first, effects second. But that order of events does not always occur in the quantum world. Effects can be simultaneous with causes, and effects can precede causes. This is one minor example of that.

Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways--air, and water, and land--because of ungovernable science.

You always have an option. There is always something you can do. You are never without choice.

Everything is sex. Trust me. It always comes down to sex.

The meaning of these discoveries has not yet been sorted out, but it is certainly now impossible to regard the prehistoric Europeans as savages idly awaiting the blessings of Eastern civilization.

Welcome to Jurassic Park

He vomited again. There was blood everywhere.

You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice.

CivilizaÈ›ia nu ne ÎNDEPÄ'RTEAZÄ' de natur?. CivilizaÈ›ia ne PROTEJEAZÄ' de natur?.

The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.

In the information, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

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. So we imagine other life forms as being like us, so we don't have to think of the real threat—the terrifying threat—they may represent, without ever intending to.

What don't you care about? Anything, Malcolm said. Because... everything looks different... on the other side. And he smiled.

Once you began to expose a fossil, you had to continue, or risk losing it. Visitors imagined the landscape of the badlands to be unchanging, but in fact it was continuously eroding, literally right before your eyes; all day long you could hear the clatter of pebbles rolling down the crumbling hillside. And there was always the risk of a rainstorm; even a brief shower would wash away a delicate fossil.

we lose the ability to make our own products, we lose control over our destiny. It's that simple.

That's the problem. We're now dependent on Japan—and I believe America shouldn't be dependent on any nation.