Quotes from Michael Crichton

Yes, I said 1962 levels. I know it's hard to believe, but think back to the fifties, when American workers could own a house, raise a family, and send the kids to college, all on a single paycheck. Now both parents work and most people still can't afford a house.

There's one problem with all psychological knowledge—nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained.

Nothing is obvious.

scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and your instruments, but in the end your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work.

But from my point of view, such an undertaking is impossible. The mathematics are so self-evident that they don't need to be calculated. It's rather like my asking you whether, on a billion dollars in income, you had to pay tax. You wouldn't need to pull out your calculator to check. You'd know tax was owed. And, similarly, I know overwhelmingly that one cannot successfully duplicate nature in this way, or hope to isolate it.

Irrationality didn't atrophy with disuse. On the contrary, left unattended, the irrational side of man had grown in power and scope.

Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always. "The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate.

Biography," observed Oscar Wilde, "lends to death a new terror.

Story of our species, Malcom said, laughing. Everybody knows it's coming, but not so soon.

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

Too much change is as destructive as too little.

You know, there's a reason why people like morphine," he said.

Among human beings, vocabulary was considered the best measure of intelligence.)

Parasitism and symbiosis were the true basis for evolutionary change. These processes lay at the heart of all evolution, and had been present from the very beginning. Lynn Margulis was famous for demonstrating that bacteria had originally developed nuclei by swallowing other bacteria.

name. "I may not be," Cope said. "Religion explains what man cannot explain.

A sign that read WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH dangled from one hinge

Y entretanto, ¿te das cuenta de cómo se mueve el bote? Eso es el mar. Es real. ¿Hueles el salitre en el aire? ¿Notas el sol en la piel? Eso es real. ¿Nos ves a todos aquí juntos? Eso es real. La vida es maravillosa. Estar vivo, respirar y ver el sol es un don. Y de hecho no hay nada más que eso.

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.

There is a peculiar neo-Stalinist mode of thought that is required to support all this, and it can thrive only in a restrictive setting, behind closed doors, without due process. In our society, only universities have created that—so far. The notion that these institutions are liberal is a cruel joke. They are fascist to the core, I'm telling you.

theoretician, his reputation secured in probability-density functions

Malcolm: A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special.

When the English introduced the new Enfield rifle in 1857, the cartridges for the rifle came from the factory liberally coated with grease. It was necessary to bite the cartridges to release the powder. Among the sepoy regiments there was a rumor that the grease was made from pigs and cows, and thus these cartridges were a trick to defile the sepoys and make them break caste.

All that matters is not remote from where the Buddha sits.

Acho que as pessoas querem ler sobre as coisas que mais desejam e que experimentam menos.