Quotes from Prey

“We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“They didn't understand what they were doing.
I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“Kids didn't have huge backpacks when I was their age. We didn't have backpacks at all. Now it seemed all the kids had them. You saw little second-graders bent over like sherpas, dragging themselves through the school doors under the weight of their packs. Some of the kids had their packs on rollers, hauling them like luggage at the airport. I didn't understand any of this. The world was becoming digital; everything was smaller and lighter. But kids at school lugged more weight than ever.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything---evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing---it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“The fact that the biosphere responds unpredictably to our actions is not an argument for inaction. It is, however, a powerful argument for caution, and for adopting a tentative attitude toward all we believe, and all we do. Unfortunately, our species has demonstrated a striking lack of caution in the past. It is hard to imagine that we will behave differently in the future.

We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. We never seem to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so might be wrong in the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking by less able minds--and then confidently embarks on fresh errors of its own.

We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“At forty, I was too old to work as a programmer myself anymore; writing code is a young person’s job.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“There's one problem with all psychological knowledge - nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“Kids are more advanced these days. The teenage years now start at 11.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“Like everything else I'd seen at Xymos, it was jerry-built, half-baked, concocted in a hurry to solve present problems and never a thought to the future.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“But it was one thing to release a population of virtual agents inside a computer's memory to solve a problem. It was another thing to set real agents free in the real world.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“In any case, this was a deep human prejudice. Human beings to find a central command in any organization. States had governments. Corporations had CEOs. Schools had principals. Armies had generals. Human beings tended to believe that without central command, chaos would overwhelm the organization and nothing significant could be accomplished.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“Sometimes agents were so influenced by one another that they lost track of their goal and did something else instead. In that sense, the program was very childlike, unpredictable and easily distracted. As one programmer put it - trying to program distributed intelligence is like telling a five year old kid to go to his room and change his clothes. He may do that, but he is equally likely to do something else and never return.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“There are many people, including myself, who are quite queasy about the consequences of this technology for the future. —K. Eric Drexler, 1992”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“But then, things never turn out the way you think they will.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

“Unable to construct genuine nanoassemblers, Xymos was using bacteria to crank out their molecules. This was genetic engineering, not nanotechnology.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Prey

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Popular quotes

“Brightly woven, Diar,' Aileron said. And then dazzled them all with the warmth of his smile.”
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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.