Fred Hoyle Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned.

Fred Hoyle
We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.

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
These 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.

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

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

Fred Hoyle
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.

Fred Hoyle
If there is anything more wonderful than matter in the sheer versatility of its behavior, I have yet to hear tell of it.

Fred Hoyle
If one is obliged to be efficient about everything the best that can be achieved is a moderate measure of competence.

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
It is unlikely that stars die without a spectacular protest.

Fred Hoyle
Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.

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

Fred Hoyle
I do not see any sense in continuing to skirmish on a battlefield where I can never hope to win. The Cambridge system is effectively designed to prevent one ever establishing a directed policy — key decisions can be upset by ill-informed and politically motivated committees. To be effective in this system one must for ever be watching one's colleagues, almost like a Robespierre spy system. If one does so, then of course little time is left for any real science.

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

Fred Hoyle
A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.

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
If there is one thing we can be sure enough of in physics it is that all time exists with equal reality.

Fred Hoyle
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.

Fred Hoyle
If matters still seem very uncertain it must always be remembered that clearly sign-posted roads are not to be expected at a pioneering frontier.

Fred Hoyle
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.

Fred Hoyle
The aim is to bite good and hard on the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Fred Hoyle