Fred Hoyle - Earth Quotes

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

Fred Hoyle
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
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
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
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