Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichtonwas an American best-selling author, physician, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films. In 1994, Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at No. 1 in US television, film, and book sales...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 October 1942
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
The system didn't screw you. The system revealed you.
Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.
But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.
All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself.
Human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.
If you gamble long enough, you'll always lose -- the gambler is always ruined.
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.
Cure the symptoms, cure the disease.
I was raised with the idea that if you're not smart enough to do science you can do politics.
The purpose of history is to explain the present - to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power. The power to define a whole society.
Morality must keep up with technology because if a person is faced with the choice of being moral and dead or immoral and alive, they'll choose life everytime.
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right.
It takes enormous effort to avoid all theories and just see.
A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics.