The Andromeda Strain

by Michael Crichton

Nearly everyone involved had moments of great brilliance, and moments of unaccountable stupidity.

Even in the time of Newton and Galileo, men knew more about the moon and other heavenly bodies than they did about their own.

There are three billion men on the earth, and that seems a great many until we consider that ten or even one hundred times that number of bacteria can be contained within a large flask.

He often argued that human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.