Quotes from Michael Crichton

At the edge of chaos, unexpected outcomes occur. The risk to survival is severe.

Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.

Expectation works in mysterious ways---and totally unconsciously.

They always say they didn't. I never heard of one who said, 'You know, I deserve this.' Never happens.

Harassment is about power---the undue exercise of power by a superior over a subordinate.

In a sense, he thought, all we consist of is memories. Our personalities are constructed from memories, our lives are organized around memories, our cultures are built upon the foundation of shared memories that we call history and science.

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

Each person bears a fear which is special to him. One man fears a close space and another man fears drowning; each laughs at the other and calls him stupid. Thus fear is only a preference, to be counted the same as the preference for one woman or another, or mutton for pig, or cabbage for onion.

My own sense is that the acquisition of self knowledge has been made difficult by the modern world. More and more human beings live in vast urban environments, surrounded by other human beings and the creations of human beings. The natural world, the traditional source of self-awareness, is increasingly absent.

The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.

What is it about nature that is so terrifying to the modern mind? Why is it so intolerable? Because nature is fundamentally indifferent. It's unforgiving, uninterested. If you live or die, succeed or fail, feel pleasure or pain, it doesn't care. That's intolerable to us. How can we live in a world so indifferent to us. So we redefine nature. We call it Mother Nature when it's not a parent in any real sense of the term.

Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly. In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory.

Only assholes put a nickname on their business card.

Exercise invigorates the body and sharpens the mind.

I do so think well of a man who dies with finesse.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.

She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn't have any close friends, didn't go out on dates, didn't even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD, and become a scientist.

Men under stress are fools, and fool themselves.

Unaccustomed to direct experience, we can come to fear it. We don't want to read a book or see a museum show until we've read the reviews so that we know what to think. We lose the confidence to perceive ourselves. We want to know the meaning of an experience before we have it. We become frightened of direct experience, and we will go to elaborate lengths to avoid it.

Personally, I don't deal much in theory. I have to deal with the facts. And on the basis of facts, I don't see much difference in the behavior of men and women.

The system didn't screw you. The system revealed you.

The minute we look, we cease being afraid.

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.

Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet—or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.