Fred Hoyle Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Fred Hoyle
The nation that neglects creative thought today will assuredly have its nose ground into the dust of tomorrow.

Fred Hoyle
Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.

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

Fred Hoyle
From the standpoint of biology, our presence on the Earth depends on a remarkable and even fantastic sequence of chemical processes. From the standpoint of physics, the very material of which we are constituted has experienced an evolution scarcely less remarkable.

Fred Hoyle
With so many possible planetary systems, should we not expect inhabited planets to be moving around some of the nearby stars? We certainly should.

Fred Hoyle
Think of the stars as ordinary household specks of dust. Then we must think of a galaxy as a collection of specks a few miles apart from each other, the whole distribution filling a volume about equal to the Earth. Evidently one such collection of specks could pass almost freely through another.

Fred Hoyle
It is unlikely that stars die without a spectacular protest.

Fred Hoyle
If there is one important result that comes out of our inquiry into the nature of the Universe it is this: when by patient inquiry we learn the answer to any problem, we always find, both as a whole and in detail, that the answer thus revealed is finer in concept and design than anything we could ever have arrived at by a random guess.

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

Fred Hoyle
It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness.

Fred Hoyle
To the optical astronomer, radio data serves like a good dog on a hunt.

Fred Hoyle
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.

Fred Hoyle
If anyone is resolved to find fault with it, let him first be sure he understands it.

Fred Hoyle
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 on the ball, always with it, that we should beware of.

Fred Hoyle
It is a suspicious feature of the explosion theory that no obvious relics of a superdense state of the Universe can be found.

Fred Hoyle
It is almost a matter of principle that in any difficult unsolved problem the right method of attack has not been found; failure to solve important problems is rarely due to the inadequacy in the handling of technical details.

Fred Hoyle
In science answers are not important, it is the questions that are important.

Fred Hoyle
If I were asked to define theoretical astronomy in one sentence I should say that it consists of discovering the properties of matter, partly by experiments carried out on the Earth and partly through the detailed observation of near-by space, and in then applying the results to the Universe as a whole.

Fred Hoyle
On scientific grounds this big bang assumption is much the less palatable of the two [steady state theory or point source origin theory]. For it is an irrational process that cannot be described in scientific terms.

Fred Hoyle
Great credit accrues to those who make a scientific discovery when the world is already teetering on the edge of it, whereas the discoverer who is markedly too early scarcely earns a footnote in scientific history.

Fred Hoyle
The Universe is everything; both living and inanimate things; both atoms and galaxies; and if the spiritual exists as well as the material, of spiritual things also; and if there is a Heaven and a Hell, of Heaven and Hell too; for by its very nature the Universe is the totality of all things.

Fred Hoyle
Without continuous creation, the Universe must evolve toward a dead state in which all the matter is condensed into a vast number of dead stars.

Fred Hoyle
The astronomer seems at first sight to be the most helpless of all scientists. He cannot experiment with the Universe. It is a significant matter of nomenclature that whereas we speak of experimental work in other sciences we speak of observational work in astronomy.

Fred Hoyle
Colonization of the galaxy is impossible because it was deliberately arranged to be so.

Fred Hoyle
Science progresses by extending the territory over which its theories hold good.

Fred Hoyle
Perhaps the most majestic feature of our whole existence is that while our intelligences are powerful enough to penetrate deeply into the evolution of this quite incredible Universe, we still have not the smallest clue to our own fate.

Fred Hoyle
The physicist is mainly interested in the detailed structure of the threads in our tapestry. He is less interested in the broad pattern on the tapestry itself. The broadest pattern of all, on the scale of stars and galaxies, is the business of the astronomer.

Fred Hoyle
Astronomical distances have the air of a conjuring trick. The vastness of cosmic dimensions fills us with astonishment. Yet like a conjuring trick it all looks very obvious when we see how it is done. The methods of measurement are indeed of a very mundane character.

Fred Hoyle