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Fred Hoyle Quotes

1915–2001 England

Sir Fred Hoyle, FRS (June 24, 1915 – August 20, 2001) was a British astronomer and science fiction author.

England
Astronomers
Novelists
Science fiction authors

Also known as: Hoyle, Fred

Random Fred Hoyle quote

46 quotes

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

Losing power, utterly and completely, is the most dreadful prospect that a politician can think of. It overshadows everything else.

The Black Cloud (1957)

It’s only too easy to read your own state of mind into what other people say.

The Black Cloud (1957)

The two men were mentally too dissimilar for more than a half hour of conversation between them to be possible.

The Black Cloud (1957)

All people are the same, pretty well irrespective of color, creed, or the way they happen to grunt out their language.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

However, there is one respect in which the human species has shown not the slightest originality—its excessive reproductive vigor.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

There may be hagglers who will dispute this statement, but if so I propose to disregard them.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

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

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999)

Believing the first cell originated by chance is like believing a tornado ripping through a junkyard full of airplane parts could produce a Boeing 747.

All people are pretty much alike, except in so far as ambition may change a man from a normal person into a machine or a monster.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

“I’m still waiting to hear how I should have compromised. Are you sure that ‘compromise’ and ‘capitulate’ are not synonymous in your vocabulary?”

The Black Cloud (1957)

Experience shows that knowledge dies very hard once it has been obtained—the acquisition of knowledge is essentially irreversible, a truth already recognized in the Garden of Eden.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

I will say this for you, Chris. I never knew anyone who was better at finding work for other people.

The Black Cloud (1957)

“Not everyone views the government with quite the same disrespect that you do.”
“No, more’s the pity.”

The Black Cloud (1957)

Ifs and buts are the stuff of politics, Mr. Parkinson. As a scientist I am concerned with facts not with motives, suspicions, and airy-fairy nothingness.

The Black Cloud (1957)

It is easy to give a recipe for writing a successful non-fiction book—simply find grounds for optimism that no one has spotted before and expatiate thereon.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.

My education was still full of holes, which I made a resolve to fill. I am still trying to carry it out.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

The concept here is that a highly organized society can collapse through a population overload, even though the people themselves are not starving. It is the organization that ultimately becomes overloaded and collapses.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

I helped him willingly and most efficiently, the latter because I knew that if I did jobs cheerfully and badly I wouldn’t be asked too often.

Encounter with the Future (1965)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Fred Hoyle (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.