Francis Crick Quotes

If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong. ~ Francis Crick

Human beings ... are far too prone to generalize from one instance. The technical word for this, interestingly enough, is superstition. ~ Francis Crick

Free will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus. ~ Francis Crick

For simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the - class as having one too few. ~ Francis Crick

The major credit I think Jim and I deserve is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold. ~ Francis Crick

A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement. ~ Francis Crick

In the fullness of time, educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after death. ~ Francis Crick

A final proof of our ideas can only be obtained by detailed studies on the alterations produced in the amino acid sequence of a protein by mutations of the type discussed here. ~ Francis Crick

There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper. ~ Francis Crick

Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time left for serious thinking. ~ Francis Crick

If the code does indeed have some logical foundation then it is legitimate to consider all the evidence, both good and bad, in any attempt to deduce it. ~ Francis Crick

If poly A is added to poly U, to form a double or triple helix, the combination is inactive. ~ Francis Crick

God is a hacker, not an engineer ~ Francis Crick

Almost all aspects of life are engineered at the molecular level, and without understanding molecules we can only have a very sketchy understanding of life itself. ~ Francis Crick

The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry. ~ Francis Crick

A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much. ~ Francis Crick

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. ~ Francis Crick

I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood. Perhaps in other company he is that way, but I have never had reason so to judge him. ~ James D. Watson

Haemoglobin is a very large molecule by ordinary standards, containing about ten thousand atoms, but the chances are that your haemoglobin and mine are identical, and significantly different from that of a pig or horse. You may be impressed by how much human beings differ from one another, but if you were to look into the fine details of the molecules of which they are constructed, you would be astonished by their similarity. ~ Francis Crick

At lunch Francis winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life. ~ James D. Watson

While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research. ~ Francis Crick

It now seems certain that the amino acid sequence of any protein is determined by the sequence of bases in some region of a particular nucleic acid molecule. ~ Francis Crick

We have to take away from humans in the long run their reproductive autonomy as the only way to guarantee the advancement of mankind. ~ Francis Crick

All approaches at a higher level are suspect until confirmed at the molecular level. ~ Francis Crick

How do I know what I think until I hear what I say? ~ Francis Crick

You can do reverse engineering, but you can't do reverse hacking. ~ Francis Crick

Our ... advantage was that we had evolved unstated but fruitful methods of collaboration ... If either of us suggested a new idea, the other, while taking it seriously, would attempt to demolish it in a candid but non-hostile manner. ~ Francis Crick

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong ~ Francis Crick

Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don't be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach. ~ Francis Crick

It has yet to be shown by direct biochemical methods, as opposed to the indirect genetic evidence mentioned earlier, that the code is indeed a triplet code. ~ Francis Crick

So while Pauling struggled with his model, Watson and Crick turned theirs inside out, so the negative phosphorus ions wouldn't touch. This gave them a sort of twisted ladder - the famed double helix. ~ Sam Kean

A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do. ~ Francis Crick

Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice. ~ Francis Crick

It is amateurs who have one big bright beautiful idea that they can never abandon. Professionals know that they have to produce theory after theory before they are likely to hit the jackpot. ~ Francis Crick

In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy. ~ Francis Crick

If you want to understand function, study structure, ~ Francis Crick

We've discovered the secret of life. ~ Francis Crick

This seems highly likely, especially as it has been shown that in several systems mutations affecting the same amino acid are extremely near together on the genetic map. ~ Francis Crick

Consciousness is somehow a by-product of the simultaneous, high frequency firing of neurons in different parts of the brain. It's the meshing of these frequencies that generates consciousness, just as tones from individual instruments produce the rich, complex, & seamless sounds of a symphony orchestra ~ Francis Crick

To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there. ~ Francis Crick

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. ~ Francis Crick

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist. ~ Francis Crick

Anybody who believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old needs psychiatric help. ~ Francis Crick

We are sometimes asked what the result would be if we put four +'s in one gene. To answer this my colleagues have recently put together not merely four but six +'s. ~ Francis Crick

If, for example, all the codons are triplets, then in addition to the correct reading of the message, there are two incorrect readings which we shall obtain if we do not start the grouping into sets of three at the right place. ~ Francis Crick

I think she [Rosalind Franklin] was a good experimentalist but certainly not of the first rank. She was simply not in the same class as Eigen or Bragg or Pauling, nor was she as good as Dorothy Hodgkin. She did not even select DNA to study. It was given to her. Her theoretical crystallography was very average. ~ Francis Crick

He told me that Francis Crick and Jim Watson had solved the structure of DNA, so we decided to go across to Cambridge to see it. This was in April of 1953. ~ Sydney Brenner

I think that the formation of [DNA's] structure by Watson and Crick may turn out to be the greatest developments in the field of molecular genetics in recent years. ~ Linus Pauling

It now seems very likely that many of the 64 triplets, possibly most of them, may code one amino acid or another, and that in general several distinct triplets may code one amino acid. ~ Francis Crick

Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the relative order of the bases within various triplets, but my own view is that these are premature until there is more extensive and more reliable data on the composition of the triplets. ~ Francis Crick

It is one of the more striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical textbooks - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. ~ Francis Crick

In the words of the late Francis Crick ... You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. (13) ~ Mary Roach

It would appear that the number of nonsense triplets is rather low, since we only occasionally come across them. However this conclusion is less secure than our other deductions about the general nature of the genetic code. ~ Francis Crick

Moreover the incorporation requires the same components needed for protein synthesis, and is inhibited by the same inhibitors. Thus the system is most unlikely to be a complete artefact and is very probably closely related to genuine protein synthesis. ~ Francis Crick

It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As far as I am aware the presently accepted set of twenty amino acids was first drawn up by Watson and myself in the summer of 1953 in response to a letter of Gamow's. ~ Francis Crick

How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular, to show us how to group the bases into codons. ~ Francis Crick

Dawkins asserts that final causes and design don't really exist. Unguided evolution explains it all. Francis Crick thought the same thing but was afraid people would be misled by what they actually saw. So he issued this warning: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." What? A warning to ignore the obvious? Absolutely. Because if we don't ignore the obvious, we might be tempted to follow common sense and attribute the "appearance" of design to actual design. ~ Frank Turek

A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship. ~ Francis Crick

Evolution is cleverer than you are. ~ Francis Crick

Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick. ~ Francis Crick

Unfortunately it makes the unambiguous determination of triplets by these methods much more difficult than would be the case if there were only one triplet for each amino acid. ~ Francis Crick

What could be more foolish than to base one's entire view of life on ideas that, however plausible at the time, now appear to be quite erroneous? And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs? ~ Francis Crick

I also suspect that many workers in this field [molecular biology] and related fields have been strongly motivated by the desire, rarely actually expressed, to refute vitalism. ~ Francis Crick

Francis Crick, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA, believes that DNA could only have arrived from space, sent in the form of bacteria from more advanced civilizations. ~ Walker Percy

The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all as things now are with slight endeavour and scanty success. ~ Francis Bacon

My daughter is a practicing physician so believe me I get a lot of the frustration from her. You get it from patients. For me personally, when I ask my doctor to send me my record, what I get is a scanned PDF of his hard copy! This is not good. It would be hopeless to work with a million people if you had to do this on paper, and one of the reasons this is the right time for this is because of the existence of EHRs. ~ Francis Collins

Take the famous slogan on the atheist bus in London … "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." … The word that offends against realism here is "enjoy." I'm sorry - enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I'm not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion … Only sometimes, when you're being lucky, will you stand in a relationship to what's happening to you where you'll gaze at it with warm, approving satisfaction. The rest of the time, you'll be busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion … This really is a bizarre category error.
But not necessarily an innocent one … The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren't being "worried" by us believer … Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What's so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks?
… Suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, that you are the fifty-something woman with the Tesco bags, trudging home to find out whether your dementing lover has smeared the walls of the flat with her own shit again. Yesterday when she did it, you hit her, and she mewled till her face was a mess of tears and mucus which you also had to clean up. The only thing that would ease the weight on you ~ Francis Spufford

Sin, also for those who don't have faith, exists when one goes against one's conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action. ~ Pope Francis

I actually do not believe that there are any collisions between what I believe as a Christian, and what I know and have learned about as a scientist. I think there's a broad perception that that's the case, and that's what scares many scientists away from a serious consideration of faith. ~ Francis Collins

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable. ~ Francis Bacon

There is so often a great disparity between how we feel about faith and how we are meant to feel. Why do so few people genuinely find joy and pleasure in their relationship with God? Why do most people feel they have to either pay God back for all He's done (buy His love) or somehow keep making up for all their inadequacies and failures (prove their love)? ~ Francis Chan

Sometimes you're not ready to give the world quite what it wants. And that's okay, because the Earth is generously patient. ~ Jaree Francis

Voltaire once wrote, "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." Sir Francis Bacon added, "A prudent question is one-half of wisdom." Indira Gandhi concluded that "the power to question is the basis of all human progress." Great questions are clearly the quickest path to great answers. ~ Gary Keller

God hath given to mankind a common library, His creatures; to every man a proper book, himself being an abridgment of all others. If thou read with understanding, it will make thee a great master of philosophy, and a true servant of the divine Author: if thou but barely read, it will make thee thine own wise man and the Author's fool. ~ Francis Quarles

The bee collects honey from flowers in such a way as to do the least damage or destruction to them, and he leaves them whole, undamaged and fresh, just as he found them. ~ Saint Francis De Sales

your next great read! ~ Francis J. West Jr.

Laboratories are useful, but reflection for us must always start from experience. ~ Pope Francis

The only problem is that it was a concept I was aught, not something I implicitly knew o be true. For years, I 'got' God's love in my head, checked the right answer on the 'what God is like' test, but didn't fully understand it with my heart. ~ Francis Chan

Ask yourselves this question: How often is Jesus inside and knocking at the door to be let out, to come out? And we do not let him out because of our own need for security, because so often we are locked into ephemeral structures that serve solely to make us slaves and not free children of God. ~ Pope Francis

The way to subject all things to thyself is to subject thyself to reason; thou shalt govern many, if reason govern thee. Wouldst thou be crowned the monarch of a little world? command thyself. ~ Francis Quarles

Unlike Francis Crawford, whose game with life was a strange and rootless affair played with the intellect, Jerott had a passionate instinct to live. It was a happy circumstance also that his nervous and bronchial systems were roughly as frail as a bison's. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

The human genome will not help us to understand the spiritual side of humankind, or to know who God is or what love is. The well-heeled couple who decide they want to use genetics to have a child that is a gifted musician may end up with a sullen adolescent who smokes marijuana and doesn't talk to them. ~ Francis Collins

He that hath promised pardon on our repentance hat not promised life till we repent. ~ Francis Quarles

If we wish to follow Christ closely, we cannot choose an easy, quiet life. It will be a demanding life, but full of joy. ~ Pope Francis

Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends ~ Francis Bacon

Legal systems, at both the national and international level, are therefore required to recognize, guarantee and protect religious freedom, which is a right intrinsically inherent in human nature, in man's dignity as a free being, and is also an indicator of a healthy democracy and cone of the main sources of the legitimacy of the State. Religious freedom ... favors the development of relationships of mutual respect between the different Confessions and their healthy collaboration with the State and political society, without confusion of roles and without antagonism. ~ Pope Francis

For five years he [Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)] served as personal secretary to, yes, Francis Bacon. In fact, I've noted over a course of years that the job of a secretary can be utterly fulfilling just in case one's boss happens to be Francis Bacon. ~ Daniel N. Robinson

Missionaries never give up on their dream of peace, even when they experience difficulties and persecution, which makes their presence strongly felt today. ~ Pope Francis

The essence of cinema is editing. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

Humility makes our lives acceptable to God, meekness makes us acceptable to men. ~ Saint Francis De Sales

I believe that in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. ~ Pope Francis

Just because something is said with the wrong attitude doesn't mean it's wrong information ~ Francis Chan

Even today we raise our hand against our brother ... We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death. ~ Pope Francis

What the gods are supposed to be, what the priests are commissioned to say, is not a sensational secret like what those running messengers of the Gospel had to say. Nobody else except those messengers has any Gospel; nobody else has any good news; for the simple reason that nobody else has any news.

Those runners gather impetus as they run. Ages afterwards they still speak as if something had just happened. They
have not lost the speed and momentum of messengers; they have hardly lost, as it were, the wild eyes of witnesses. In the Catholic Church, which is the cohort of the message, there are still those headlong acts of holiness that speak of something rapid and recent; a self-sacrifice that startles the world like a suicide. But it is not a suicide; it is not pessimistic; it is still as optimistic as St. Francis of the flowers and birds. It is newer in spirit than the newest schools of thought; and it is almost certainly on the eve of new triumphs. For these men serve a mother who seems to grow more beautiful as new generations rise up and call her blessed. We might sometimes fancy that the Church grows younger as the world grows old. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Boldness is a child of ignorance ~ Francis Bacon

You know," she had said, "I believe we are all given at least one moment in our lives when the world reveals itself to us, in all its workings. We comprehend everything at once, and then forget almost all of it a second later, because none of us could hold it all in our heads. But we are changed afterward," shaking her head, "in a most profound way. ~ Brian Francis Slattery

Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness God brings us, the newness God asks of us. We are like the apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God's surprises. ~ Pope Francis

The most adventurous thing I've done is learn how to fly a helicopter in the Philippines. One night we landed on a beach and slept on it. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger. ~ Francis Quarles

Water is the mirror of nature. ~ Francis Of Assisi