Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Universe
Detail
Understand
Brains
Place
Vast
Around
Details
Essential
Essentials
Complicated
Assess
Brain
Correctly

More quotes by Francis Crick

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is notoriously difficult to define the word living.
Francis Crick
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.
Francis Crick
Image
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.
Francis Crick
Image
A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship.
Francis Crick
Image
A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.
Francis Crick
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The balance of evidence both from the cell-free system and from the study of mutation, suggests that this does not occur at random, and that triplets coding the same amino acid may well be rather similar.
Francis Crick
Image
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
Image
The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.
Francis Crick
Image
Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick.
Francis Crick
Image
Do codons overlap? In other words, as we read along the genetic message do we find a base which is a member of two or more codons? It now seems fairly certain that codons do not overlap.
Francis Crick