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40cab2e
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Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.
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science
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Michael Crichton |
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289ded1
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Life finds a way
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Michael Crichton |
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7601034
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Story of our species," Malcolm said, laughing. "Everybody knows it's coming, but not so soon."
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Michael Crichton |
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6c936b8
|
The system didn't screw you. The system revealed you.
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Michael Crichton |
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e97000a
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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.
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Michael Crichton |
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d8aa96b
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She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn't have any close friends, didn't go out on dates, didn't even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD, and become a scientist.
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life
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Michael Crichton |
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47fec35
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If you gamble long enough, you'll always lose -- the gambler is always ruined.
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gambling
vice
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Michael Crichton |
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b60aa56
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Only assholes put a nickname on their business card.
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Michael Crichton |
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e4db5e1
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In a sense, he thought, all we consist of is memories. Our personalities are constructed from memories, our lives are organized around memories, our cultures are built upon the foundation of shared memories that we call history and science.
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Michael Crichton |
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d7a6d2c
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I do so think well of a man who dies with finesse.
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Michael Crichton |
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7592784
|
The nasty little apes that call themselves human beings can do nothing except run and hide.
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Michael Crichton |
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bcaaec2
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Personally, I don't deal much in theory. I have to deal with the facts. And on the basis of facts, I don't see much difference in the behavior of men and women.
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Michael Crichton |
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d1ec138
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My own sense is that the acquisition of self knowledge has been made difficult by the modern world. More and more human beings live in vast urban environments, surrounded by other human beings and the creations of human beings. The natural world, the traditional source of self-awareness, is increasingly absent.
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nature
self-awareness
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Michael Crichton |
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cf0a803
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Each person bears a fear which is special to him. One man fears a close space and another man fears drowning; each laughs at the other and calls him stupid. Thus fear is only a preference, to be counted the same as the preference for one woman or another, or mutton for pig, or cabbage for onion.
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fear
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Michael Crichton |
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c06fc0f
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Unaccustomed to direct experience, we can come to fear it. We don't want to read a book or see a museum show until we've read the reviews so that we know what to think. We lose the confidence to perceive ourselves. We want to know the meaning of an experience before we have it. We become frightened of direct experience, and we will go to elaborate lengths to avoid it.
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Michael Crichton |
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d91de10
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Harassment is about power---the undue exercise of power by a superior over a subordinate.
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Michael Crichton |
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be1f9ae
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To apply general tools to specific problems is to fail.
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Michael Crichton |
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5260ea3
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At forty, I was too old to work as a programmer myself anymore; writing code is a young person's job.
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Michael Crichton |
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220c590
|
The risk is too great. A man cannot place too much faith in any one thing, neither a woman, nor a horse, nor a weapon, nor any single thing.
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faith
michael-crichton
quote
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Michael Crichton |
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2a1b93c
|
In his blackest hours, Stone doubted the utility of all thought, and all intelligence. There were times he envied the laboratory rats he worked with; their brains were so simple. Certainly, they did not have the intelligence to destroy themselves; that was a peculiar invention of man.
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Michael Crichton |
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c8f977e
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But where will this mania for entertainment end? What will people do when they get tired of television? When they get tired of movies? We already know the answer--they go into participatory activities: sports, theme parks, amusement rides, roller coasters. Structured fun, planned thrills. And what will they do when they tire of theme parks and planned thrills? Sooner or later, the artifice becomes too noticeable. They begin to realize that ..
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hyperreality
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Michael Crichton |
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14ac049
|
The minute we look, we cease being afraid.
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Michael Crichton |
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c5344f8
|
In reality, time doesn't pass; we pass. Time itself is invariant. It just is. Therefore, past and future aren't separate locations, the way New York and Paris are separate locations. And since the past isn't a location, you can't travel to it.
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passing-of-time
science
time
time-travel
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Michael Crichton |
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cf2d014
|
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.
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Michael Crichton |
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5027b9a
|
Consider cotton prices," Malcolm said. "There are good records of cotton prices going back more than a hundred years. When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doin..
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ian-malcolm
jurassic-park
mandelbrot
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Michael Crichton |
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ebb4927
|
Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet--or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.
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Michael Crichton |
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38e6c0a
|
Already, the brain consumed more than a quarter of the body's blood supply... an organ accounting for only a small percentage of body mass. If brains grew larger, and better, then perhaps they would consume more - perhaps so much that, like an infection, they would overrun their hosts and kill the bodies that transported them. Or perhaps, in their infinite cleverness, they would find a way to destroy themselves and each other. There were ti..
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Michael Crichton |
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0c9a5cf
|
There's one problem with all psychological knowledge - nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I kn..
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Michael Crichton |
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109f724
|
Animals die, friends die, and I shall die, but one thing never dies, and that is the reputation we leave behind at our death.
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Michael Crichton |
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83fcea0
|
Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!
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Michael Crichton |
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d3101ca
|
His management philosophy, tempered in his rain-dancing days, was always to give the project to whoever had the most to gain from success--or the most to lose from failure.
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Michael Crichton |
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4e81d6e
|
Like all trial attorneys, he knew the importance of not dressing too well.
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Michael Crichton |
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5f276a5
|
Kids are more advanced these days. The teenage years now start at 11.
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teenagers
teens
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Michael Crichton |
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fe79755
|
Without question, the notion of the doctor as a legitimate fee-for-service entrepreneur, making his fortune from misfortunes of is patients, is old-fashioned, distasteful, and doomed.
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Michael Crichton |
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6f6304a
|
I believe the experiences reported in this book are reproducible by anyone who wishes to try. I went to Africa. You can go to Africa. You may have trouble arranging the time or the money, but everybody has trouble arranging something. I believe you can travel anywhere if you want to badly enough. And I believe the same is true of inner travel. You don't have to take my word about chakras or healing energy or auras. You can find about them ..
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psychic
skepticism
spiritual
spirituality
travel
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Michael Crichton |
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1c8fabe
|
He did not want an affair with his boss. He did not even want a one-night stand. Because what always happened was that people found out, gossip at the water cooler, meaningful looks in the hallway. And sooner or later the spouses found out. It always happened. Slammed doors, divorce lawyers, child custody.
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Michael Crichton |
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2225199
|
Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don't do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science. Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big eq..
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Michael Crichton |
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472ad4d
|
In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.
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Michael Crichton |
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37a82eb
|
Having wallowed in a delightful orgy of anti-French sentiment, having deplored and applauded the villains themselves, having relished the foibles of bankers, railwaymen, diplomats, and police, the public was now ready to see its faith restored in the basic soundness of banks, railroads, government, and police.
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Michael Crichton |
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df2440a
|
Absence of proof is not proof of absence
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proof
|
Michael Crichton |
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9ac3792
|
Men under stress are fools, and fool themselves.
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stress
|
Michael Crichton |
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d89cd27
|
Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn't true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and as misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly.
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Michael Crichton |
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00a722d
|
You think this is the first time such a thing has happened? Don't you know about oxygen?" "I know it's necessary for life." "It is now," Malcolm said. "But oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It's a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells--say, around three billion years ago--it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant ce..
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Michael Crichton |
|
dd6cf67
|
The truth is that civilization does not protect us from wild animals. It attempts, however imperfectly, to protect us from ourselves.
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Michael Crichton |