Michael Crichton Quotes

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

Life is chaotic and unpredictable. If a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it could cause people at the opposite end of the globe to watch a Discovery Channel special on butterflies

Chaos is perhaps at the bottom of everything.

The world is neither running down nor deterministic, and a strict division of order versus chaos is just wrong.

We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.

You're an entropic chaos factor

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

If there is no randomness in the universe, then what do we mean by chaos?

Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for 'chaos' implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions.

The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

Everything is contingent, and there is also chaos.

What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.

Zippy accepts chaos as what it is, which is the real order of everything.

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that the effect is due to chance.

There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead

If we had the fundamental laws of nature tomorrow, we still wouldn't understand consciousness. We wouldn't even understand turbulence.

'Entropy' broadly means tending towards chaos constantly.

Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.

It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.

The real truth that dare not speak itself, is that no one is in control, absolutely no one... Nobody is in control. This stuff is ruled by the equations of dynamics and chaos. Now, there may be entities seeking control - the World Bank, the Communist Party, the rich, the somebody-or-others - but to seek control is to take enormous aggravation upon yourself... It's like trying to control a dream.

I don't think there is such a thing as as a real prophet. You can never predict the future. We know why now, of course; chaos theory, which I got very interested in, shows you can never predict the future.

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher.

Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy.