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Fred Hoyle

64 quotes

• “We now come to the question of applying the observational tests to earlier theories. 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. It now turns out that... all such theories are in conflict with observational requirements.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: BBC radio broadcast, March 28, 1949. Reprinted in April 1949 in The Listener, a BBC magazine.

• “Big Bang" theory”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Nature of the Universe (1950), p. 113

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Frontiers of Astronomy (1955), p. 1

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Originally from Fred Hoyle, Of Men and Galaxies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Galaxies, Nuclei, and Quasars, Harper and Row, New York, 1965

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe (1978), p. 15

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

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Sayings of the Week", The Observer (9 September 1979)

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981)

• “Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate … . It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect … higher intelligences … even to the limit of God … such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981), pp. 141, 144, 130

• “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Hoyle on evolution, Nature, Vol. 294, No. 5837 (November 12, 1981), p. 105

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 1280 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

• “Between the ages of five and nine I was almost perpetually at war with the educational system. ...As soon as I learned from my mother that there was there was a place called school that I must attend willy-nilly—a place where you were obliged to think about matters prescribed by a 'teacher,' not about matters decided by yourself—I was appalled.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Small World of Fred Hoyle: an Autobiography (1986)

• “To achieve anything really worthwhile in research it is necessary to go against the opinions of one's fellows. To do so successfully, not merely becoming a crackpot, requires fine judgement, especially on long-term issues that cannot be settled quickly. ...To hold popular opinion is cheap, costing nothing in reputation, whereas to accept that there is evidence pointing oppositely... is to risk scientific tar and feathers. Yet not to take the risk is to make certain that, if something new is really there, you won't be the one to find it.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life (1994) p. 235.

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in Scientific American (March 1995)

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

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Attributed in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) edited by Elizabeth Knowles and Angela Partington

• “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 (1915–2001) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted by Bernard Lovell in Hoyle's obituary in The Guardian (23 August 2001)

• “Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension... Once let the sheer isolation of the Earth become plain to every man, whatever his nationality or creed, and a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose. (1948)”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Once the spark was struck the story would spread like wildfire, and would be in the papers in next to no time. The Director had never had any cause to think highly of newspaper reporters, particularly of their scientific accuracy.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But I can’t go along and gatecrash.” “Nonsense, of course you can come—a guest from England! You’ll be the lion of the party. Probably half a dozen film moguls from Hollywood will want to sign you up on the spot.” “All the more reason for not going,” said Kingsley.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The two men were mentally too dissimilar for more than a half hour of conversation between them to be possible.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I’m still waiting to hear how I should have compromised. Are you sure that ‘compromise’ and ‘capitulate’ are not synonymous in your vocabulary?”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Ifs and buts are the stuff of politics, Mr. Parkinson. As a scientist I am concerned with facts not with motives, suspicions, and airy-fairy nothingness.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You haven’t very much respect for my profession, have you, Professor Kingsley?” “Since it is you who wish for frankness, I will tell you that I have not. I regard politicians rather as I regard the instruments on the dashboard of my car. They tell me what is going on in the engine of state, but they don’t control it.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Not everyone views the government with quite the same disrespect that you do.” “No, more’s the pity.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The policy was to keep everything in watertight compartments. In the interests of security, they said, but more likely in the interests of inefficiency.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Before anyone starts criticising, let me say that I know it’s a preposterous idea and I wouldn’t suggest it for a moment if the alternative weren’t even more outrageously preposterous.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I will say this for you, Chris. I never knew anyone who was better at finding work for other people.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Viewed from a wholly logical point of view the bearing and rearing of children is a thoroughly unattractive proposition. To a woman it means pain and endless worry. To a man it means extra work extending over many years to support his family. So, if we were wholly logical about sex, we should probably not bother to reproduce at all. Nature takes care of this by making us utterly and wholly irrational.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It isn’t the Universe that’s following our logic, it’s we that are constructed in accordance with the logic of the Universe. And that gives what I might call a definition of intelligent life: something that reflects the basic structure of the Universe.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Now do you see my point?” “I’m beginning to see through a glass darkly. You mean that the mental make-up of a leading politician is likely to be such that he couldn’t dream it possible that anyone could find the prospect of becoming a dictator wholly unpalatable.” “Yes, I can see it all, Chris,” Leicester grinned. “Graft everywhere, executions just for the laughs, no wife or daughter safe.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Losing power, utterly and completely, is the most dreadful prospect that a politician can think of. It overshadows everything else.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It’s only too easy to read your own state of mind into what other people say.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Lives loss through an ‘act of God’ are regretted, perhaps deeply regretted, but they do not arouse our wildest passions. It is otherwise with lives that are forfeited through deliberate human agency. The word ‘deliberate’ is important here. One deliberate murder can produce a sharper reaction than ten thousand deaths on the roads.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “By and large, conventional religion, as many humans accept it, is illogical in its attempt to conceive of entities lying outside the Universe. Since the Universe comprises everything, it is evident that nothing can lie outside it. The idea of a ‘god’ creating the Universe is a mechanistic absurdity clearly derived from the making of machines by men. I take it that we are in agreement about all this.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is easy to give a recipe for writing a successful non-fiction book—simply find grounds for optimism that no one has spotted before and expatiate thereon.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Inevitably we are led to ask: why does this appalling rubbish get published—and not merely published, but displayed prominently in the very heart of an apparently respectable newspaper? In a word, because this is what people want, and if The Times didn’t fill itself pretty well from cover to cover with such stuff it would soon go out of business.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “This may seem like insanity, and so it is. It offsets the real problems of modern life. How can an apparently insane species manage to organize itself in a civilized way? I am not so sure that it can. The big mystery is why we have managed to get so far.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Any organization is better than no organization. Tribal customs show great variety, but they have in common the property of enabling a number of humans to act in concert with each other. It is the communal character of group action that is important, not the particular customs of any particular tribe. Group action is the essential common denominator of all tribal life. And any group acting together is far more powerful than the same number of persons acting only as individuals.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “So far from proceeding in this way, the really curious feature of every organization in which it has been my misfortune to be involved is that while people argue vociferously and almost completely without data about all projected changes they show a little or no interest in the effects of changes after they have been introduced.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All people are the same, pretty well irrespective of color, creed, or the way they happen to grunt out their language.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Where, then, do we go from here? The answer to this critical question plainly depends on whether the rise of the world population becomes permanently stabilized or not. Will the warnings of the past be heeded? My suspicion is that they will not.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “However, there is one respect in which the human species has shown not the slightest originality—its excessive reproductive vigor.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There may be hagglers who will dispute this statement, but if so I propose to disregard them.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The concept here is that a highly organized society can collapse through a population overload, even though the people themselves are not starving. It is the organization that ultimately becomes overloaded and collapses.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Experience shows that knowledge dies very hard once it has been obtained—the acquisition of knowledge is essentially irreversible, a truth already recognized in the Garden of Eden.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I am often asked what it is like to be a scientist and how one goes about being a scientist. I find such questions uncomfortable because I know of no nicely potted answers to them. It is necessary to dig deep into one’s own experience to produce anything like a worthwhile assessment. And this is to risk the perils of autobiography, usually so fascinating to the narrator and so boring to the reader.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Quite recently I was asked to write an article to be entitled, “How to Become a Good Scientist.” In communicating my refusal to the periodical in question I was tempted to end the argument in one sentence, “By not writing articles such as this,” and then demanding my fee.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “My cast of mind is a very bad handicap in this age of the committee. My true thoughts when I sit on a committee are so grotesquely at variance with the business in hand that they simply cannot be expressed at all. I am overwhelmed by the fatuity of most of what is being said, and there is a constant parade in my mind of the pathetic political figures of the first third of the present century.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All people are pretty much alike, except in so far as ambition may change a man from a normal person into a machine or a monster.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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