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"The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.'"
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"Most people do not have a problem with you thinking for yourself, as long as your conclusions are the same as or at least compatible with their beliefs."

"Conformity rules society not wisdom or simplicity."

"Conformity keeps us closed minded."

"A 'normal person' is what is left after society has squeezed out all unconventional opinions and aspirations out of a human being."

"Conformity is the biggest enemy of progress. Break those limiting social rules."

"It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so - I don't know - not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and - sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way."

"People like us are dead to society unless we're pretentious, tell people what they want to hear, take off our clothes, or pretend to be like them."

"A big element of what they regard as conformity is simply a desire to have an audience."

"If I have forfeited the ability to wonder so as not to offend the tenets of the culture, and if I have sacrificed warm dreams on the cold altar of conformity, it is likely because I have somewhere traded the marvel of the infinite for the malaise of the finite."

"Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born-never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything."
Explore more quotes by Michael Crichton

"Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species."

"We have created a man with not one brain but two. This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. The patient's biological brain is the peripheral terminal - the only peripheral terminal - for the new computer. And therefore the patient's biological brain, indeed his whole body, has become a terminal for the new computer. We have created a man who is one single, large, complex computer terminal. The patient is a read-out device for the new computer, and is helpless to control the readout as a TV screen is helpless to control the information presented on it."

"A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer better fantasies... And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else."

"Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it has been drunk."

"A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics."

"For our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt."

"They want to see their expectation... Entertainment has nothing to do reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality."
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