Fred Hoyle - Universe Quotes

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

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
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
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
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
Only the biological processes of mutation and natural selection are needed to produce living creatures as we know them. Such creatures are no more than ingenious machines that have evolved as strange by-products in an odd corner of the Universe.

Fred Hoyle
It is true that we must not accept a theory on the basis of emotional preference but it is not an emotional preference to attempt to establish a theory that would place us in a position to obtain a complete understanding of the Universe. The stakes are high, and win or lose, are worth playing for.

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

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
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
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