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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

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Francis Crick
Age: 88 †
Born: 1916
Born: June 8
Died: 2004
Died: July 28
Biochemist
Biologist
Geneticist
Molecular Biologist
Neuroscientist
Physicist
Scientist
University Teacher
Francis Harry Compton Crick
Francis H.C. Crick
Right
Remains
Blundering
Think
Gold
Selecting
Thinking
Vision
Stumbled
Looking
Sticking
Fact
Majors
Facts
Major
True
Credit
Problem
Deserve

More quotes by Francis Crick

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You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.
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The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.
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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.
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Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.
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Anybody who believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old needs psychiatric help.
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Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.
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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.
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Protein synthesis is a central problem for the whole of biology, and that it is in all probability closely related to gene action.
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You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.
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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.
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There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper.
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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.
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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
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Jim and I hit it off immediately, partly because our interests were astonishingly similar and partly, I suspect, because a certain youthful arrogance, a ruthlessness, an impatience with sloppy thinking can naturally to both of us.
Francis Crick
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A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.
Francis Crick
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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
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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.
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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
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God is a hacker, not an engineer
Francis Crick
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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 clinches into place.
Francis Crick