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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
780d7f9	Temporal provincials were convinced that the present was the only time that mattered, and that anything that had occurred earlier could be safely ignored.			Michael Crichton
ddcc367	All right," Malcolm said. "Let's go back to the beginning." He paused, staring at the ceiling. "Physics has had great success at describing certain kinds of behavior: planets in orbit, spacecraft going to the moon, pendulums and springs and rolling balls, that sort of thing. The regular movement of objects. These are described by what are called linear equations, and mathematicians can solve those equations easily. We've been doing it for h..			Michael Crichton
1eb60cd	Chaos theory throws it right out the window. It says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all. You can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting--about half a billion dollars in the last few decades--is money wasted. It's a fool's errand. It's as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do..			Michael Crichton
ed80862	Wu shrugged. "So? Just reset: shut the system down and you'll clear memory." "I've never done it before," Arnold said. "And I'm reluctant to do it. Maybe" --			Michael Crichton
bc6770f	You know what's wrong with scientific power?" Malcolm said. "It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are. It never fails."			Michael Crichton
97cd1f1	Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it's a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody ..			Michael Crichton
d820b41	We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.			Michael Crichton
ec08697	Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it's a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the en..			Michael Crichton
7e945ce	Plants evolve like every other form of life, and they've come up with their own forms of aggression, defense, and so on. In the nineteenth century, most theories concerned animals--nature red in tooth and claw, all that. But now scientists are thinking about nature green in root and stem. We realize that plants, in their ceaseless struggle to survive, have evolved everything from complex symbiosis with other animals, to signaling mechanisms..			Michael Crichton
aa5ba56	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 Benet..			Michael Crichton
4c33291	In evolutionary theory, this is called the Red Queen phenomenon," Malcolm said. "Because in Alice in Wonderland the Red Queen tells Alice she has to run as fast as she can just to stay where she is. That's the way evolutionary spirals seem. All the organisms are evolving at a furious pace just to stay in the same balance. To stay where they are." Arby said, "And this is common? Even with plants?" "Oh yes," Levine said. "In their own way, pl..			Michael Crichton
a4e6740	you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.			Michael Crichton
24259ee	Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud.			Michael Crichton
6778bd4	Malcolm coughed, and stared into the distance. "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."			Michael Crichton
63802ed	The technician consulted the enclosed documents. "Lizard is biting local children. They have a question about identification of the species, and a concern about diseases transmitted from the bite." She produced a child's picture of a lizard, signed TINA at the top. "One of the kids drew a picture of the lizard."			Michael Crichton
d9bd824	That's the greatest single scientific discovery of the twentieth century. You can't study anything without changing it." Since Galileo, scientists had adopted the view that they were objective observers of the natural world. That was implicit in every aspect of their behavior, even the way they wrote scientific papers, saying things like "It was observed ..." As if nobody had observed it. For three hundred years, that impersonal quality was..			Michael Crichton
38b43de	How can you design for people if you don't know history and psychology? You can't. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up.			Michael Crichton
cb7b16b	It isn't a matter of wanting it or not. It's a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect co control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn't control it. He's at the mercy of it. Bu..			Michael Crichton
2ce7f4e	If there's anything worse than a limousine liberal," Morton said, "it's a Gulfstream environmentalist."			Michael Crichton
269c408	Life is too short, and DNA too long.			Michael Crichton
94726f0	They want to see their expectation... Entertainment has nothing to do reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality.		lies media	Michael Crichton
0c71dc1	I suspect everybody has a degree of psychic ability, just as a everybody has a degree of athletic or artistic ability. Some people have special gifts; other people have a particular interest that leads them to develop their abilities. But the phenomenon itself is ordinary and widespread.		psychic-abilities	Michael Crichton
8fa5bdc	Classically, the ability to invent and execute plans was believed to be limited to only three species: chimpanzees, gorillas, and human beings. Now			Michael Crichton
b2ebf54	A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there.... And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day." "I guess it's one way to look at things," Grant said. "No," Malcolm said. "It's the only way to look at things. At least, the only way that is true to reality. You ..			Michael Crichton
c8d6da8	These animals are genetically engineered to be unable to survive in the real world. They can only live here in Jurassic Park. They are not free at all. They are essentially our prisoners.		jurassic-park science-fiction	Michael Crichton
1b2dc35	You want a university appointment?" "Yes." "That's a mistake," Hammond said briskly. "At least, if you respect your talent." Wu had blinked. "Why?" "Because, let's face facts," Hammond said. "Universities are no longer the intellectual centers of the country. The very idea is preposterous. Universities are the backwater. Don't look so surprised."			Michael Crichton
d3ca1e7	Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way." Malcolm"			Michael Crichton
833a028	About all we can hope to do is blow them apart.			Michael Crichton
2e21ebc	Life will find its way			Michael Crichton
dee1e0f	Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way." Malcolm"			Michael Crichton
31fe12c	The biggest cause of environmental destruction is poverty. Starving people can't worry about pollution. They worry about food. Half			Michael Crichton
48c526c	What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." ALBERT EINSTEIN"			Michael Crichton
596abf1	Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The			Michael Crichton
f6bb747	All the deep-diving studies show that women are superior for submerged operations. They're physically smaller and consume less nutrients and air, they have better social skills and tolerate close quarters better, and they are physiologically tougher and have better endurance.			Michael Crichton
07441c1	based on UN statistics, is that before the DDT ban, malaria had become almost a minor illness. Fifty thousand deaths a year worldwide. A few years later, it was once again a global scourge. Fifty million people have died since the ban,			Michael Crichton
85f139c	Yet I have discovered that if all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief...			Michael Crichton
9c31022	it was "the hardest damn thing I ever did in my life. I don't care how many feathers a man wears in his hair, he's still a man. One of them, Red Legs, looked at me and said 'do you think this is fair? Would you sign such a paper?' and I could not meet his eyes. It made me sick."			Michael Crichton
5c29383	We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.			Michael Crichton
41b5c2a	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.			Michael Crichton
99de281	She had discovered long ago that you could use a computer without understanding how it worked. Just as you could use an automobile, vacuum cleaner - or your own brain.			Michael Crichton
f46a1a6	And in that moment, their situation was clear to him. Their guides were both dead. One machine was gone. Their return marker was shattered. Which meant they were stuck in this place. Trapped here, without guides or assistance. And with no prospect of ever getting back. Not ever.			Michael Crichton
a1d1908	En cierto sentido, no estamos integrados mas que por recuerdos. Nuestra personalidad se estructura a partir de recuerdos, nuestra vida esta organizada en torno a recuerdos, nuestras culturas se erigen sobre los cimientos de los recuerdos compartidos, a los que denominamos "historia" y "ciencia". Y desistir de un recuerdo, desistir del conocimiento, desistir de los pasado no es facil."			Michael Crichton
17b0679	In any case, this was a deep human prejudice. Human beings to find a central command in any organization. States had governments. Corporations had CEOs. Schools had principals. Armies had generals. Human beings tended to believe that without central command, chaos would overwhelm the organization and nothing significant could be accomplished.			Michael Crichton
46bc36f	You have done the work of a mere man," the tengol continued, "and not a proper hero. A hero does what no man dares to undertake."			Michael Crichton

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