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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

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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
Existence
Smallest
Powerful
Features
Universe
Incredible
Stills
Deeply
Intelligences
Still
Evolution
Majestic
Whole
Fate
Feature
Enough
Perhaps
Penetrate
Quite
Clue

More quotes by Fred Hoyle

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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
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Science is prediction, not explanation.
Fred Hoyle
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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
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He who lives among dogs must learn to pant.
Fred Hoyle
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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
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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.
Fred Hoyle
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A superintellect has monkeyed with physics.
Fred Hoyle
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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
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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
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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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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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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
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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
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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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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
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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
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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
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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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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
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There are many ways of knocking electrons out of atoms. The simplest is to rub two surfaces together.
Fred Hoyle