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Michael Crichton quotes - page 4
"I would give anything to know what you thought at the moment you died," Pierce said. His voice echoed in the tomb. The flame went out.
Michael Crichton
Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends.
Michael Crichton
They passed a farmhouse, a simple shack surrounded by animals - a lazy burro, clucking chickens, a litter of pigs. The farmhouse stood alone in the desolate landscape. There was no sign of a living person anywhere. And then it was gone, lost in the swirling dust plume of the car.
Michael Crichton
Being on the "Hold" is the technological equivalent of purgatory.
Michael Crichton
I want to make it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment. I believe it is essential to act in ways that are sympathetic to the environment, now and in the future. I believe that the world has genuine problems and I believe they must be addressed effectively. But I also think that deciding what constitutes responsible action is immensely difficult, and I believe the consequences of our actions are often difficult to know in advance.
Michael Crichton
I tried to tell which was Randall, but I could not; in their gowns and masks, they all looked the same, impersonal, interchangeable. That was not true of course. One of those four men had responsibility for everything, for the contact of all sixteen workers present. And responsibility for the seventeenth person in that room, the man whose heart was stopped.
Michael Crichton
Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions is genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.
Michael Crichton
As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact.
Michael Crichton
Julia's original email says, "We have nothing to lose." But in the end they lost everything - their company, their lives, everything. And the ironic thing is, the procedure worked. The swarm actually solved the problem they had set for it.
Michael Crichton
In recent years, much has been said about the post-modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct.
Michael Crichton
In a sense that is a part of the training: surgeons are lonely men.
Michael Crichton
Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
Michael Crichton
You could not predict what would happen in a single instance, a single throw of the dice, a single pitch in the seventh inning, a single toss of the coin. But you could predict three out of five, four out of ten, seven out of sixteen, and to that extent chance governed everyone, all the time. Just as surely as two equals two.
Michael Crichton
There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago? When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?
Michael Crichton
Carr was left with a ring, in the palm of his hand, a small gold circle, leading him nowhere.
Michael Crichton
Mere talk makes drama and spectacle unlikely - unless the talk becomes heated and excessive. So it becomes excessive. Not every show features the Crossfire-style food-fight, but it is a tendency on all shows.
Michael Crichton
The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepreneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations that all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science.
Michael Crichton
Leland Weston: "Never take a position unless you are certain it can be defended any onslaught. That may sound like good advice to a general, but then, a courtroom is nothing more then a very civilized war."
Michael Crichton
What is clear, however, is that on this issue [global warming], science and policy have become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them out.
Michael Crichton
Readers probably haven't heard much about it yet, but they will. Quantum technology turns ordinary reality upside down.
Michael Crichton
You want to know about the last tomb? [Conway] asked Pierce. "I'll tell you." He tapped the white cranium. "That's the last tomb, man. Right there, and you're buried there all your life. You can't escape it.
Michael Crichton
In the conservative region far from the chaotic edge, individual elements coalesce slowly, showing no clear pattern.
Michael Crichton
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