Quotes from Michael Crichton

I believe my life has a value, and i don't want to waste it thinking about clothing. I don't want to think about what i will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion?

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

Malcolm said, "You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct. Don't you have that feeling now?

In his blackest hours, Stone doubted the utility of all thought, and all intelligence. There were times he envied the laboratory rats he worked with; their brains were so simple. Certainly, they did not have the intelligence to destroy themselves; that was a peculiar invention of man.

Animals die, friends die, and I shall die, but one thing never dies, and that is the reputation we leave behind at our death.

To apply general tools to specific problems is to fail.

All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself.

His management philosophy, tempered in his rain-dancing days, was always to give the project to whoever had the most to gain from success--or the most to lose from failure.

Good novels are not written, they're rewritten!

At forty, I was too old to work as a programmer myself anymore; writing code is a young person's job.

The risk is too great. A man cannot place too much faith in any one thing, neither a woman, nor a horse, nor a weapon, nor any single thing.

A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics.

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.

Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don't.

Take it easy, Norman. When the psychiatrist goes crazy, it's a bad sign.

Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way." Malcolm shook his head.

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

Kids are more advanced these days. The teenage years now start at 11.

He did not want an affair with his boss. He did not even want a one-night stand. Because what always happened was that people found out, gossip at the water cooler, meaningful looks in the hallway. And sooner or later the spouses found out. It always happened. Slammed doors, divorce lawyers, child custody.

Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!

The truth is that civilization does not protect us from wild animals. It attempts, however imperfectly, to protect us from ourselves.

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.

Because in the late twentieth century, you couldn't seriously ask other people to think that you believed in honor and truth, and the purity of the body, the defense of women, the sanctity of true love, and all the rest of it. But apparently, Andre really had believed it.