They just posture and pontificate. Nobody tests. Nobody does field research. Nobody dares to solve the problems – because the solution might contradict your philosophy, and for most people clinging to beliefs is more important than succeeding in the world.

— Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton Quotes

Unable to construct genuine nanoassemblers, Xymos was using bacteria to crank out their molecules. This was genetic engineering, not nanotechnology.

— Michael Crichton

Of course, some dinosaurs had been social and cooperative. But others had been hunters – and killers of unparalleled viciousness. For Malcolm, the truest picture of life in the past incorporated the interplay of all aspects of life, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak. It was no good pretending anything else.

— Michael Crichton

In the darkened trailer, Kelly was frightened, but she was reassured at the no-nonsense way Sarah talked about weapons. And Kelly was beginning to see that Sarah didn’t let anything stop her, she just went and did it. This whole attitude of not letting other people stop you, of believing that you could do what you wanted, was something she found herself imitating.

— Michael Crichton

Well,” Dodgson said. “I have my own version of the scientific method. I call it focused research development. If only a few ideas are going to be good, why try to find them yourself? It’s too hard. Let other people find them – let them take the risk – let them go for the so-called glory. I’d rather wait, and develop ideas that already show promise. Take what’s good, and make it better. Or at least, make it different enough so that I can patent it. And then I own it. Then, it’s mine.

— Michael Crichton

On the wall behind was a row of chrome letters that said “We Make The Future,” but the words were obscured by a tangle of vines.

— Michael Crichton

Over the radio, Eddie was saying, “I’m telling you, we should have tested first, Doc. Should have done it by the book. You don’t come to a place with poisonous chickens if you’re not sure your vehicles will hold up.

— Michael Crichton

Within the company, Dodgson presented himself as a researcher, even though he lacked the ability to do original research, and had never done any. His intellect was fundamentally derivative; he never conceived of anything until someone else had thought of it first. He was very good at “developing” research, which meant stealing someone else’s work at an early stage. In this, he was without scruple and without peer.

— Michael Crichton

Perhaps the fact that we bleed to death makes us human.

— Michael Crichton

It is living, breathing, walking, and talking. Only we cannot see it, because it is happening too slowly. Rock has a lifespan of three billion years. we have a lifespan of sixty or seventy years. And the rock is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark.

— Michael Crichton

The old ideas about survival of the fittest had gone out of fashion long ago. Those views were too simpleminded. Nineteenth-century thinkers saw evolution as ‘nature red in tooth and claw,’ envisioning a world where strong animals killed weaker ones. They didn’t take into account that the weaker ones would inevitably get stronger, or fight back in some other way. Which of course they always do.

— Michael Crichton

The behavior of the dinosaurs had always been a minor consideration for Wu. And rightly so: behavior was a second-order effect of DNA, like protein enfolding. You couldn’t really predict behavior, and you couldn’t really control it, except in very crude ways, like making an animal dependent on a dietary substance by withholding an enzyme. But, in general, behavioral effects were simply beyond the reach of understanding. You couldn’t look at a DNA sequence and predict behavior. It was impossible.

— Michael Crichton

Crichton remains the only writer to have a number one book, movie, and TV show in the same year.

— Michael Crichton

It seemed a simple matter of eliminating the cause and, in due course, the effect. From this comfortable perspective, it was absolutely astonishing to discover that “the criminal class” had found a way to prey upon progress – and indeed to carry out a crime aboard the very hallmark of progress, the railway.

— Michael Crichton

Unfortunately, the law has nothing to do with justice, Mr. Sanders,” she said. “It’s merely a method for dispute resolution.

— Michael Crichton

We are finding wonderful dinosaurs!’ Exulted Cope. ‘Wonderful, marvelous dinosaurs.

— Michael Crichton

There was a high piercing shriek. Tim looked back to see the baby in the jaws of the adult. A second velociraptor came forward and tore at the limbs of the infant, trying to pull it from the mouth of the first. The two raptors fought over the baby as it squealed. Blood splattered in large drops onto the floor. “They ate him,” Lex said. The raptors fought over the remains of the baby, rearing back and butting heads.

— Michael Crichton

You said yourself, John, this park is entertainment,” Wu said. “And entertainment has nothing to do with reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality.

— Michael Crichton

Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways – air, and water, and land – because of ungovernable science.

— Michael Crichton

Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other. Its practitioners aren’t saints, they’re human beings, and they do what human beings do – lie, cheat, steal from one another, sue, hide data, fake data, overstate their own importance, and denigrate opposing views unfairly. That’s human nature. It isn’t going to change.

— Michael Crichton

And yet there had never been a biologic crisis. The Andromeda Strain provided the first.

— Michael Crichton
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