Fred Hoyle Quotes - Page 2

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• 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

  Mistake, Greatness, Men

  Fred Hoyle (1966). “Of Men and Galaxies”, p.21, University of Washington Press

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• Things are the way they are because they were the way they were.

  Fred Hoyle

  Way

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• 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

  Differences, Long, Today

  "Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe". Book by Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle (p. 15), 1978.

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• The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time.

  Fred Hoyle

  Numbers, Suggestions, Might

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• Words are like harpoons. Once they go in, they are very hard to pull out.

  Fred Hoyle

  Hard

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• I have little hesitation in saying that as a result a sickly pall now hangs over the big bang theory. As I have mentioned earlier, when a pattern of facts becomes set against a theory, experience shows that it rarely recovers.

  Fred Hoyle

  Bangs, Patterns, Littles

  "The Intelligent Universe". Book by Fred Hoyle (Page 186), 1983.

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• One [idea] was that the Universe started its life a finite time ago in a single huge explosion, and that the present expansion is a relic of the violence of this explosion. This big bang idea seemed to me to be unsatisfactory even before detailed examination showed that it leads to serious difficulties.

  Fred Hoyle

  Life, Science, Ideas

  Fred Hoyle (1960). “The nature of the universe”

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• In the popular mind, if Hoyle is remembered it is as the prime mover of the discredited Steady State theory of the universe. "Everybody knows" that the rival Big Bang theory won the battle of the cosmologies, but few (not even astronomers) appreciate that the mathematical formalism of the now-favoured version of Big Bang, called inflation, is identical to Hoyle's version of the Steady State model.

  Fred Hoyle

  Appreciate, Mind, Battle

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• 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

  Lying, Adventure, Men

  "Frontiers of Astronomy". Book by Fred Hoyle (p. 1), 1955.

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• Well, we now have such a photograph... Has any new idea been let loose? It certainly has. You will have noticed how suddenly everybody has become seriously concerned to protect the natural environment... It seems to me more than a coincidence that this awareness should have happened at exactly the moment man took his first step into space.

  Fred Hoyle

  Men, Should Have, Ideas

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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

  Cells, Order, Earth

  The Big Bang in Astronomy, New Scientist, Vol. 92, No. 1280, (p. 527), November 19, 1981.

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• The main efforts of investigators have been in papering over contradictions in the big bang theory, to build up an idea which has become ever more complex and cumbersome.

  Fred Hoyle

  Ideas, Effort, Bangs

  "The Intelligent Universe". Book by Fred Hoyle, 1983.

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• It seems to be a characteristic of all great work that it creators wear a cloak of imprecision.

  Fred Hoyle

  Great Work, Characteristics, Cloaks

  Fred Hoyle (1966). “Of Men and Galaxies”, p.24, University of Washington Press

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• Outstanding examples of genius - a Mozart, a Shakespeare, or a Carl Friedrich Gauss - are markers on the path along which our species appears destined to tread.

  Fred Hoyle

  Example, Genius, Path

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• Once I had learnt my twelve times table (at the age of three) it was downhill all the way.

  Fred Hoyle

  Age, Twelve, Three

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• 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

  Young, Regard, Outrageous

  Scientific American, March 1995.

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• There are many ways of knocking electrons out of atoms. The simplest is to rub two surfaces together.

  Fred Hoyle

  Two, Together, Atoms

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• A superintellect has monkeyed with physics.

  Fred Hoyle

  Physics

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• Not far from the meeting's venue, at one of the famed Observatory Club tea meetings, Fred once started a talk by saying, 'Oh, Ooh, basically a star is a pretty simple thing.' And from the back of the room was heard the voice of R. O. Redman, saying, 'Well, Fred, you'd look pretty simple too, from ten parsecs!

  Fred Hoyle

  Stars, Simple, Voice

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• The seemingly insuperable difficulties of deep-space travel suggest an intention to keep us fixed at home in our own solar system, and the physical nature of our part of the Universe, as well as the basic rules of physics and chemistry, have a warning look about them, like barriers designed to isolate intelligent life. This means that for us, unlike the situation for humble microorganisms, deep-space travel is probably a stark impossibility.

  Fred Hoyle

  Future, Humble, Mean

  Fred Hoyle (1983). “The Intelligent Universe”

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• I don't see the logic of rejecting data just because they seem incredible ... the establishment defends itself by complicating everything to the point of incomprehensibility.

  Fred Hoyle

  Establishment

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• It is no more likely that our world has evolved out of chaos than that a hurricane, blowing through a junk yard, should create a Boeing.

  Fred Hoyle

  Our World, Junk, Yards

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• 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 with it, that we should beware of.

  Fred Hoyle

  Journey, Men, Air

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• I do not believe that anything really worthwhile will come out of the exploration of the slag heap that constitutes the surface of the moon...Nobody should imagine that the enormous financial budget of NASA implies that astronomy is now well supported.

  Fred Hoyle

  Believe, Moon, Financial

  "Galaxies, Nuclei, and Quasars". Book by Fred Hoyle, 1965.

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• Hoyle's enduring insights into stars, nucleosynthesis, and the large-scale universe rank among the greatest achievements of 20th-century astrophysics. Moreover, his theories were unfailingly stimulating, even when they proved transient.

  Fred Hoyle

  Stars, Achievement, Century

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