Quote

Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule.

Fred Hoyle

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Blind
Designed
Chance
Super
Minuscule
Force
Intellect
Calculating
Nature
Forces
Properties
Must
Findings
Atom
Would
Finding
Utterly
Otherwise
Atoms
Property
Carbon

More quotes by Fred Hoyle

Image
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
Image
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
Image
The universe is a put-up job.
Fred Hoyle
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Words are like harpoons. Once they go in, they are very hard to pull out.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension.
Fred Hoyle
Image
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.
Fred Hoyle
Image
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
Image
Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.
Fred Hoyle
Image
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 10 to the 40,000 power, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.
Fred Hoyle
Image
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
Image
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
Image
He who lives among dogs must learn to pant.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes known, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.
Fred Hoyle
Image
Science is prediction, not explanation.
Fred Hoyle
Image
There are many ways of knocking electrons out of atoms. The simplest is to rub two surfaces together.
Fred Hoyle
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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