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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| c5cbbc3 | Human beings are so destructive," Malcolm said. "I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase." | Michael Crichton | ||
| 747ea5b | Algunos analistas de medios de comunicacion han advertido que en los informativos de hoy en dia no se comprueba nada de nada. "Se redacta la noticia y se busca una nueva", afirma un periodista. Otro colega ha opinado, a condicion de que no se revele su identidad: "Hay que reconocer que era una noticion. Si se hubiera comprobado, no habria habido noticia"." | Michael Crichton | ||
| ae3e74b | yrdd 'hl lshml mthl sh`by yqwl : " nZr khlfk " whm y`tqdwn b'n `l~ kl nsn 'n ykwn mhyy' dy'm ln ydf` `n nfsh" | Michael Crichton | ||
| 96cb2d3 | Terror can fill any space | Michael Crichton | ||
| 785920c | Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 6c871f8 | And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don't like to be reminded of how frail we are--how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended. So | Michael Crichton | ||
| 03798ec | Algunos analistas de medios de comunicacion han advertido que en los informativos de hoy en dia no se comprueba nada de nada. <>, afirma un periodista. Otro colega ha opinado, a condicion de que no se revele su identidad: <>. | Michael Crichton | ||
| db0f03c | He's an engineer. Wu's the same. They're both technicians. They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 559e463 | The characteristic of vision. That great sweeping act of imagination which evoked a marvelous park, where children pressed against the fences, wondering at the extraordinary creatures, come alive from their storybooks. Real vision. The ability to see the future. The ability to marshal resources to make that future vision a reality. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 64516ae | science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. 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 .. | Michael Crichton | ||
| ad2d650 | He thought again about the poison. He remembered that one of the animal handlers had been bitten by a compy in a cage. The handler had said the poison was like a narcotic--peaceful, dreamy. No pain. You just wanted to go to sleep. The hell with that, he thought. Hammond picked up a rock, aimed carefully, and threw it, striking one compy flat in the chest. The little animal shrieked in alarm as it was knocked backward, and rolled over its ta.. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 746f7ea | But they're not real now," Wu said. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. There isn't any reality here." | Michael Crichton | ||
| 0cd294a | Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear. | Michael Crichton | ||
| a3b728b | The DNA molecule was so old that its evolution had essentially finished more than two billion years ago. | Michael Crichton | ||
| ca54cfc | For four hundred years since Galileo, science has always proceeded as a free and open inquiry into the workings of nature. Scientists have always ignored national boundaries, holding themselves above the transitory concerns of politics and even wars. Scientists have always rebelled against secrecy in research, and have even frowned on the idea of patenting their discoveries, seeing themselves as working to the benefit of all mankind. And fo.. | Michael Crichton | ||
| f6b9659 | Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators scar the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always. | Michael Crichton | ||
| e479840 | Dr. Malcolm," Hammond explained, "is a man of strong opinions." "And mad as a hatter," Malcolm said cheerfully. "But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought." | Michael Crichton | ||
| 12e6fc9 | Look, this island is an attempt to re-create a natural environment from the past. To make an isolated world where extinct creatures roam freely. Correct?" "Yes." "But from my point of view, such an undertaking is impossible. The mathematics are so self-evident that they don't need to be calculated. It's rather like my asking you whether, on a billion dollars in income, you had to pay tax. You wouldn't need to pull out your calculator to che.. | Michael Crichton | ||
| a0cc77f | Chaos theory describes nonlinear systems. It's now become a very broad theory that's been used to study everything from the stock market to heart rhythms. A very fashionable theory. Very trendy to apply it to any complex system where there might be unpredictability. | Michael Crichton | ||
| b21b95f | There is a problem with that island. It is an accident waiting to happen. | Michael Crichton | ||
| ed9f88b | The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 58a23bd | entertainment has nothing to do with reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality. | Michael Crichton | ||
| c683d73 | 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. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 3faa710 | Of course! he thought. He had touched the screen. It was a touch screen! The red lights around the edges must be infrared sensors. Tim had never seen such a screen, but he'd read about them in magazines. He touched RESET/REVERT. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 9e26b7d | All major changes are like death," he said. "You can't see to the other side until you are there." And" | Michael Crichton | ||
| 628e7f1 | Broadly speaking, the ability of the park to control the spread of life-forms. 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. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 70bb153 | the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought. | Michael Crichton | ||
| afcfff0 | In the past, pure scientists took a snobbish view of business. They saw the pursuit of money as intellectually uninteresting, suited only to shopkeepers. And | Michael Crichton | ||
| ff776dc | They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate. They can't just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist's job, | Michael Crichton | ||
| 2e9fbe3 | We spared no expense. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 4e47a43 | 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. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 8992fb1 | Photographs provided a tangible reality to men who were far from home, fearful and tired; they were posed proofs of success, souvenirs to send to sweethearts and loved ones, or simply ways of remembering, of grasping a moment in a swiftly changing and uncertain world. His | Michael Crichton | ||
| fa5c0ff | In the 1980s, a few genetic engineering companies began to ask, "What is the biological equivalent of a Sony Walkman?" These" | Michael Crichton | ||
| 80eb8c6 | But now," he continued, "science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. 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. Sc.. | Michael Crichton | ||
| f2aa067 | As foolish, and as misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly. | Michael Crichton | ||
| a0864c6 | All major changes are like death," he said. "You can't see to the other side until you are there." | Michael Crichton | ||
| 3e10e45 | But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." -- | Michael Crichton | ||
| e7a7b7b | Today we are surrounded by man and his creations. Man is inescapable, everywhere on the globe, and nature is a fantasy, a dream of the past, long gone. | Michael Crichton | ||
| e2563cb | Just tell us," Harding said, bent over the wound. "Darwin had no idea ..." "That life is so unbelievably complex," Malcolm said. "Nobody realizes it. I mean, a single fertilized egg has a hundred thousand genes, which act in a coordinated way, switching on and off at specific times, to transform that single cell into a complete living creature. That one cell starts to divide, but the subsequent cells are different. They specialize. Some are.. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 61956ad | behavior is always changing, all the time. Our planet is a dynamic, active environment. Weather is changing. The land is changing. Continents drift. Oceans rise and fall. Mountains thrust up and erode away. All the organisms on the planet are constantly adapting to those changes. The best organisms are the ones that can adapt most rapidly. That's why it's hard to see how a catastrophe that produces a large change could cause extinction, sin.. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 9a299ba | Because extinction has always been a great mystery. It's happened five major times on this planet, and not always because of an asteroid. Everyone's interested in the Cretaceous die-out that killed the dinosaurs, but there were die-outs at the end of the Jurassic and the Triassic as well. They were severe, but they were nothing compared to the Permian extinction, which killed ninety percent of all life on the planet, on the seas and on the .. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 36f804e | there was no objective truth, only the truth that's established by power. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 932034e | 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. This is not a good system for research into those areas of science that affect policy. Even worse, the system works against problem solving. Because if you solve a problem, your funding ends. All that's got.. | Michael Crichton | ||
| 0ab7520 | But even more important," he said, "is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call 'the edge of chaos.' We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the .. | Michael Crichton |