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The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2) QUOTES

The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2) QUOTES

1 " These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, “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.” He peppered his lectures with quotations from Plato, Chaka Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu.

But as a professor who was popular with his students—and who advocated general education—Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. In this climate, being liked by your students was a sign of shallowness; and interest in real-world problems was proof of intellectual poverty and a distressing indifference to theory. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

2 " A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer better fantasies... And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

3 " Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

4 " What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

5 " Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

6 " All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

7 " 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 , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

8 " Human beings are so destructive. 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 , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

9 " For our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

10 " 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. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

11 " All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

12 " At the edge of chaos, unexpected outcomes occur. The risk to survival is severe. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

13 " Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

14 " Absence of proof is not proof of absence. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

15 " Geniuses never pay attention. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

16 " The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

17 " If you gamble long enough, you'll always lose -- the gambler is always ruined. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

18 " All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

19 " Absence of proof is not proof of absence "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)

20 " Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish. "

― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)