Quotes from Fred Hoyle

It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example.

Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule.

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes known, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth.

There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

Earlier theories ... were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression.]

There are many ways of knocking electrons out of atoms. The simplest is to rub two surfaces together.

It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness.

There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

When I was young, the old regarded me as an outrageous young fellow, and now that I'm old the young regard me as an outrageous old fellow.

A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.

It isn't the Universe that's following our logic, it's we that are constructed in accordance with the logic of the Universe. And that gives what I might call a definition of intelligent life: something that reflects the basic structure of the Universe.

Life cannot have had a random beginning ... The trouble is that there are about 2000 enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.

There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.

Viewed from a wholly logical point of view the bearing and rearing of children is a thoroughly unattractive proposition. To a woman it means pain and endless worry. To a man it means extra work extending over many years to support his family. So, if we were wholly logical about sex, we should probably not bother to reproduce at all. Nature takes care of this by making us utterly and wholly irrational.

New ideas, fragile as spring flowers, easily bruised by the tread of the multitude, may yet be cherished by the solitary wanderer.

Things are the way they are because they were the way they were.

As soon as I learned from my mother that there was a place called school that I must attend willy nilly --- a place where you were obliged to think about matters prescribed by a 'teacher,' not about matters decided by yourself---I was appalled.

I am an atheist, but as far as blowing up the world in a nuclear war goes, I tell them not to worry.