Michael Crichton Quotes

Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers.

Science is a wonderful discipline, to which we are deeply indebted.

If you don't invest in basic research at some stage you start losing the basis of applied research.

One can not impede scientific progress.

The ... progress of improvement and discovery ought not to be overlooked. ... Philosophy already directs her finger at sources of inexhaustible power. ... We are on the eve of mechanical discoveries still greater than any which have yet appeared.

Pursue science because it is knowledge, because it broadens our horizons. There is so much more to be discovered.

Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search.

Long intervals frequently elapse between the discovery of new principles in science and their practical application... Those intellectual qualifications, which give birth to new principles or to new methods, are of quite a different order from those which are necessary for their practical application.

You'll remember Newton was furious at Leibniz, because he developed calculus at the same time. And he went to his death believing that he had copied him. And no, it's because all the elements were there, so it's almost inevitable that the next discovery - as long as people are free and allowed to experiment and try new things.

New generations of humans inherit the acquired discoveries of generations past, allowing cosmic insight to accumulate without limit. Each discovery of science therefore adds a rung to a ladder of knowledge whose end is not in sight because we are building the ladder as we go along. As far as I can tell, as we assemble and ascend this ladder, we will forever uncover the secrets of the universe - one by one.

Knowing how contented, free, and joyful is life in the world of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter its portals.

What scientist would not long to go on living, if only to see how the little truths he has brought to light will grow up?

To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries.

There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.

Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics.

It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, & as-yet unsolved problems.

It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists)... despise utility. But because. .. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before.

So with each advance in understanding come new questions. So we need to be very humble. We shouldn’t have hubris and think that we can understand everything. But history tells us that there is good reason to believe that we will continue making fantastic progress in the years ahead.

First... a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument.

The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had seemed unlike.

One may rationally stick to a degenerating research programme until it is overtaken by a rival and even after. What one must not do is to deny its poor public record... It is perfectly rational to play a risky game: what is irrational is to deceive oneself about the risk.

A scientist should be the happiest of men. Not that science isn't serious; but as everyone knows, being serious is one way of being happy, just as being gay is one way of being unhappy.