Sphere Quotes

“This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you - the ability to imagine.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“In a sense, he thought, all we consist of is memories. Our personalities are constructed from memories, our lives are organized around memories, our cultures are built upon the foundation of shared memories that we call history and science.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“The ability to imagine is the largest part of what you call intelligence. You think the ability to imagine is merely a useful step on the way to solving a problem or making something happen. But imagining it is what makes it happen.

This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you--the ability to imagine.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“On the video monitor, they saw Ted Fielding slap the polished sphere and shout, "Open! Open Sesame! Open up, you son of a bitch!"

The sphere did not respond.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don't like to be reminded of how frail we are—how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“All the deep-diving studies show that women are superior for submerged operations. They're physically smaller and consume less nutrients and air, they have better social skills and tolerate close quarters better, and they are physiologically tougher and have better endurance.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“Terror can fill any space”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“The Thematic Apperception Test was a psychological test that consisted of a series of ambiguous pictures. Subjects were supposed to tell what they thought was happening in the pictures. Since no clear story was implied by the pictures, the subjects supplied the stories. And the stories told much more about the storytellers than about the pictures.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“Understanding is a delaying tactic.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“After all, how did scientists approach their own research? The scientists all agreed: scientific research can't be stopped. If we don't build the bomb, someone else will. But then pretty soon the bomb was in the hands of new people, who said, if we don't use the bomb, someone else will.
At which point, the scientists said, those people are terrible people, they're irrational and irresponsible. We scientists are okay. But those other people are a real problem.
Yet the truth was that responsibility began with each individual person, and the choices he made. Each person had a choice.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“In general, people who aren't in touch with their emotions tend to think their emotions are unimportant.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don’t like to be reminded of how frail we are—how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended. So”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“En cierto sentido, no estamos integrados más que por recuerdos. Nuestra personalidad se estructura a partir de recuerdos, nuestra vida está organizada en torno a recuerdos, nuestras culturas se erigen sobre los cimientos de los recuerdos compartidos, a los que denominamos "historia" y "ciencia". Y desistir de un recuerdo, desistir del conocimiento, desistir de los pasado no es fácil.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“Like our padded cell?" He poked the insulated walls. "It's like living in a vagina.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“It is an absurd expression of romantic hope.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“It seemed to him that a society in which the most common prescription drug was Valium was, by definition, a society with unsolved problems.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don’t like to be reminded of how frail we are—how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“He remembered one of his teachers, fat old Dr. Temkin. “You always have an option. There is always something you can do. You are never without choice.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“And I think the answer is that we are, in reality, terribly frail animals. And we don’t like to be reminded of how frail we are—how delicate the balances are inside our own bodies, how short our stay on Earth, and how easily it is ended. So we imagine other life forms as being like us, so we don’t have to think of the real threat—the terrifying threat—they may represent, without ever intending to.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“For example, they might ignore the physical world entirely, and instead develop a highly sophisticated science of mind—in other words, the exact opposite of what Earth science had done. The alien technology might be purely mental, with no visible hardware at all.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“Irrationality didn’t atrophy with disuse. On the contrary, left unattended, the irrational side of man had grown in power and scope.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“He thought of Dr. Stein again. What was Stein’s favorite line? “Understanding is a delaying tactic.” Stein used to get angry about that. When the graduate students would intellectualize, going on and on about patients and their problems, he would interrupt in annoyance, “Who cares? Who cares whether we understand the psychodynamics in this case? Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“The fears unleashed by contact with a new life form are not understood. The most likely consequence of contact is absolute terror.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“Everything is sex. Trust me. It always comes down to sex.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“You always have an option. There is always something you can do. You are never without choice.”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“For example, astronomers believed that if we made contact with extraterrestrials, mankind would be so shocked that wars on Earth would cease, and a new era of peaceful cooperation between nations would begin. But historians thought that was nonsense. They pointed out that when Europeans discovered the New World—a similarly world-shattering discovery—the Europeans did not stop their incessant fighting. On the contrary: they fought even harder. Europeans simply made the New World an extension of pre-existing animosities. It became another place to fight, and to fight over. Similarly, astronomers”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere

“Diego”
― Michael Crichton, Sphere