Fred Hoyle Quotes

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.

It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example.

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes known, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.

In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth.

There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.

The man who voyages strange seas must of necessity be a little unsure of himself. It is the man with the flashy air of knowing everything, who is always with it, that we should beware of.

Once I had learnt my twelve times table (at the age of three) it was downhill all the way.

Things are the way they are because they were the way they were.

Words are like harpoons. Once they go in, they are very hard to pull out.

The big bang theory requires a recent origin of the Universe that openly invites the concept of creation.

It is in the world of ideas and in the relation of his brain to the universe itself that the superiority of Man lies. The rise of Man may justly be described as an adventure in ideas.

A superintellect has monkeyed with physics.

When I was young, the old regarded me as an outrageous young fellow, and now that I'm old the young regard me as an outrageous old fellow.

I don't see the logic of rejecting data just because they seem incredible.

It is no more likely that our world has evolved out of chaos than that a hurricane, blowing through a junk yard, should create a Boeing.

There are many ways of knocking electrons out of atoms. The simplest is to rub two surfaces together.

Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.

Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule.

The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.

The main efforts of investigators have been in papering over contradictions in the big bang theory, to build up an idea which has become ever more complex and cumbersome.

Earlier theories ... were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression.]

He who lives among dogs must learn to pant.

It seems to be a characteristic of all great work that it creators wear a cloak of imprecision.

The universe is a put-up job.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

I don't see the logic of rejecting data just because they seem incredible ... the establishment defends itself by complicating everything to the point of incomprehensibility.

Outstanding examples of genius - a Mozart, a Shakespeare, or a Carl Friedrich Gauss - are markers on the path along which our species appears destined to tread.

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension.

It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes not from example.

I am an atheist, but as far as blowing up the world in a nuclear war goes, I tell them not to worry.