SuperNintendo Chalmers > SuperNintendo's Quotes

“[..]Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species."
Yes? Why is that?"
Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. [..]”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World

“It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?”
― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke

“Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.”
― Ron Perlman, Easy Street: The Hard Way

“Death is a thief, the grandest perpetrator of larceny of all. It robs the potential of all the things left undone and reimburses the living with bits of memories that, with each day, pass through the fingers like a handful of sand.”
― Ron Perlman, Easy Street: The Hard Way

“Political correctness is tyranny with manners.”
― Charlton Heston

“You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park / Congo

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”
― Michael Crichton

“They didn't understand what they were doing.
I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.”
― Michael Crichton, Prey

“Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other.”
― Michael Crichton, Next

“In the corner store we pulled fat bottles of water from the shelves. No one thinks it's weird that we have to buy clean water, and that's how I know we're going to hell.”
― Michael Crichton

“I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
― Michael Crichton

“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.”
― Michael Crichton

“Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done, And if they are smart, they'll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear

“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.”
― Michael Crichton

“Obsession is just a variety of addiction ~ Ian Malcolm”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ”
― Michael Crichton

“I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”
― Michael Crichton

“Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear

“All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World

“You would think that people who had experienced injustice would be loath to inflict it on others, and yet they do so with alacrity. The victims become victimizers with a chilling righteousness. This is the nature of fanaticism, to attract and provoke extremes of behavior. And this is why fanatics are all the same, whatever specific form their fanaticism takes.”
― Michael Crichton, Dragon Teeth

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

“Even if you don’t believe in any God, you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear

“Animals die, friends die, and I shall die, but one thing never dies, and that is the reputation we leave behind at our death.”
― Michael Crichton, Eaters of the Dead

“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.”
― Michael Crichton, Micro

“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.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear

“Forth, and fear no darkness! Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken,swords shall be splintered! A sword day...a red day...ere the sun rises! Ride now!...Ride now!...Ride! Ride to ruin and the world's ending! Death! "Death!" Death! "Death!" DEATH! "Death!" Forth, Eorlingas!!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but on the mastery of his passions.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is just to do or die.”
― Lord Tennyson Alfred

“Authority forgets a dying king”
― Alfred Tennyson

“Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson