“In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“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.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“It is especially difficult for modern people to conceive that our modern, scientific age might not be an improvement over the prescientific period.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“But where will this mania for entertainment end? What will people do when they get tired of television? When they get tired of movies? We already know the answer—they go into participatory activities: sports, theme parks, amusement rides, roller coasters. Structured fun, planned thrills. And what will they do when they tire of theme parks and planned thrills? Sooner or later, the artifice becomes too noticeable. They begin to realize that an amusement park is really a kind of jail, in which you pay to be an inmate.
‘This artifice will drive them to seek authenticity. Authenticity will be the buzzword of the twenty-first century. And what is authentic? Anything that is not devised and structured to make a profit. Anything that is not controlled by corporations. Anything that exists for its own sake and assumes its own shape. But of course, nothing in the modern world is allowed to assume its own shape. The modern world is the corporate equivalent of a formal garden, where everything is planted and arranged for effect. Where nothing is untouched, where nothing is authentic.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“In reality, time doesn't pass; we pass. Time itself is invariant. It just is. Therefore, past and future aren't separate locations, the way New York and Paris are separate locations. And since the past isn't a location, you can't travel to it.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“If you [don't] know history, then [you don't] know anything. You [are] a leaf that [doesn't] know it [is] part of a tree.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“Because in the late twentieth century, you couldn't seriously ask other people to think that you believed in honor and truth, and the purity of the body, the defense of women, the sanctity of true love, and all the rest of it.
But apparently, Andre really had believed it.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“These wafers had entered the mythology of the company, including their names: Tunguska, Vesuvius, Tokyo. The Vesuvius wafer put you on the Bay of Naples at 7:00 a.m. on August 24, A.D. 79, just before burning ash killed everyone. Tunguska left you in Siberia in 1908, just before the giant meteor struck, causing a shock wave that killed every living”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“Temporal provincials were convinced that the present was the only time that mattered, and that anything that had occurred earlier could be safely ignored.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“And in that moment, their situation was clear to him. Their guides were both dead. One machine was gone. Their return marker was shattered. Which meant they were stuck in this place. Trapped here, without guides or assistance. And with no prospect of ever getting back. Not ever.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet lists and animated graphics, so executives aren’t bored. Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us. Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear. Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television. Students must be amused—everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
“The very concept of time travel makes no sense, since time doesn’t flow. The fact that we think time passes is just an accident of our nervous systems—of the way things look to us. In reality, time doesn’t pass; we pass. Time itself is invariant. It just is. Therefore, past and future aren’t separate locations, the way New York and Paris are separate locations. And since the past isn’t a location, you can’t travel to it.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Timeline
Michael Crichton
Born place: in Chicago, Illinois, The United States
Born date October 23, 1942
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“Speech itself, inevitable and unrelenting is the wind. It can dance like a zephyr. It can roar or shriek or wail. But it cant be stopped. Everything we hate about the media today was present at its creation; its corrupt or craven practitioners, its easy manipulation by the powerful, its capacity for propagating lies, its penchant for amplifying rage.
Also present was everything we admire: factual information, penetrating analysis, probing investigation, truth spoken to power. Same as it ever was.”
― Brooke Gladstone, quote from The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media
“I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you have been with a woman that you really love, when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for that long, sudden-ended always; making time stand still, sometimes so very still that afterwards you wait to hear it move,and it is slow in starting.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Green Hills of Africa
“What does it mean to have faith? (11:1) In the Bible, faith is always tied to an active trust in God and his Word. For the believer, there is no such thing as “blind faith.” Faith is the sensible response to the revealed will of God and the privileges he has promised his people. Biblical faith does not mean that people can believe in any unlikely thing and God, in response, must bring it to pass. In other words, faith that is not directly attached to God’s Word is merely positive thinking. At its core, faith—trusting God—is how people access the salvation God has provided in Christ Jesus. Abraham, the father of all who have saving faith (Ro 4:16), believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness (Jas 2:23). Faith is not righteousness, but it is how we access Jesus’ saving righteousness—something we could never access on our own (Eph 2:8). Faith, God’s gift to his followers (Eph 2:8), is fortified by paying careful attention to the Bible and practicing the spiritual disciplines. Romans 10:17 says, Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. Throughout the Christian life, faith continues to be how believers receive the privileges and necessities for serving Christ. We trust God to give what he has promised—whether it is gifts and abilities to do the work of Jesus in the world and in our own hearts (Jn 14:12–13) or whether it is carrying us through our spiritual journey and into our eternal home in heaven.”
― quote from Quest Study Bible: NIV
“People who live life in fear of taking risks die without living it.”
― Fola, quote from The Seed
“The end and design of all that is written in Scripture is to call us back from the spirit of Satan, the flesh, and the world, to full dependence on and obedience to the Spirit of God.”
― Andrew Murray, quote from Daily in His Presence: A Classic Devotional from One of the Most Powerful Voices of the Nineteenth Century
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Make Me, SirBookQuoters 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.
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