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The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.

Fred Hoyle

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Fred Hoyle
Age: 86 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 24
Died: 2001
Died: August 20
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Mathematician
Non-Fiction Writer
Physicist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Bingley
West Yorkshire
Chance
Junk
Tornadoes
Process
Yards
Assemble
Form
Processes
Comparable
Might
Forms
Therein
Life
Material
Emerged
Evolution
Yard
Materials
Sweeping
Boeing
Higher
Evolutionary
Tornado

More quotes by Fred Hoyle

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Science is prediction, not explanation.
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He who lives among dogs must learn to pant.
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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.
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The universe is a put-up job.
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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.
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It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example.
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Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.
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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.
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Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
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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.
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A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.
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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.
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A superintellect has monkeyed with physics.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension.
Fred Hoyle
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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
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Words are like harpoons. Once they go in, they are very hard to pull out.
Fred Hoyle
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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