Fred Hoyle > Quotes

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

“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.”
― Fred Hoyle

“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.”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud

“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.”
― Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe: A New View of Creation and Evolution

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

“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.”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud

“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.”
― Fred Hoyle, Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism

“Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate ... . It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect ... higher intelligences ... even to the limit of God ... such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific.”
― Fred Hoyle, Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism

“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.”
― Fred Hoyle

“New ideas, fragile as spring flowers, easily bruised by the tread of the multitude, may yet be cherished by the solitary wanderer.”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud

“Things are the way they are because they were the way they were.”
― Fred Hoyle

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

“ان الحياة لم تنشأ على الأرض، ولكنها جاءت مع سحب من الغبار الكوني من أعماق الكون، فالنشاط الحيوي في الكون لا بد أنه نشأ قبل نشأة الأرض”
― Fred Hoyle

“Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available... a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”
― Fred Hoyle

“We know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance.
[Astronomy and Cosmology - A Modern Course. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co]”
― Fred Hoyle

“Damn queer," he announced. "But lots of things damn queer. Damn queer that Moon looks just same size as Sun. Damn queer that I'm here, isn't it so?”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud

“Incompetence was Kingley's béte noire, not incompetence performed in private but incompetence paraded in public”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud

“The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.”
― Fred Hoyle

“Damn queer," he announced. "But lots of things damn queer. Damn queer that Moon looks just same size as Sum. Damn queer that I'm here, isn't it so?”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud

“Society today is based in its technology on thinking in terms of numbers. In its social organization, on the other hand, it is based on thinking in terms of words. It's in here that the real clash lies, between the literary mind and the mathematical mind.”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud

“Bu konuda bariz şekilde kötü görünmeyeceklerine katılıyorum tabii. Yaptıkları her şey için iyi sebepleri olacak. Sadece çok küçük bir insan grubunun kurtarılabileceği açığa çıktığında bu şanslı insanların topluma en yararlı olanlar olması gerektiği tartışılacak ve bu tartışma kaynatılıp damıtıldığında topluma en faydalı olanların meğer siyasi kardeşlik üyeleri, mareşaller, krallar, başpiskoposlar vs. olduğu ortaya çıkacak. Bunlardan daha önemli kim var ki zaten?”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud

“Belief is a poor substitute for certain knowledge.”
― Fred Hoyle, Facts and Dogmas in Cosmology and Elsewhere: The Rede Lecture 1982

“Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.”
― Fred Hoyle

“Küçücük bir dünyada büyük insanlar olarak kalmak mı istiyoruz, yoksa uçsuz bucaksız bir dünyada küçük insanlar olmak mı?”
― Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud