Joe > Joe's Quotes

“There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.”
― Francis Crick

“It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.”
― Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery

“Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.”
― Sir Francis Crick

“The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he'll fight and die for it."

[As quoted in The New Yorker, April 25, 2011]”
― Francis Crick

“How do I know what I think until I hear what I say?”
― Francis Crick

“It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.”
― Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery

“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

“Human beings... are far too prone to generalize from one instance. The technical word for this, interestingly enough, is superstition.”
― 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, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature

“A person's mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them.”
― Francis Crick, Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul

“All approaches at a higher level are suspect until confirmed at the molecular level.”
― Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit

“I had discovered the gossip test—what you are really interested in is what you gossip about.”
― Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit

“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

“Only gradually did I realize that this lack of qualification could be an advantage. By the time most scientists have reached age thirty they are trapped by their own expertise. They have invested so much effort in one particular field that it is often extremely difficult, at that time in their careers, to make a radical change. I, on the other hand, knew nothing, except for a basic training in somewhat old-fashioned physics and mathematics and an ability to turn my hand to new things. I”
― Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit