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You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

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
Neurons
Pack
Packs
Nothing

More quotes by Francis Crick

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It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid - usually by DNA, although certain small viruses use RNA as their genetic material.
Francis Crick
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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
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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
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It is notoriously difficult to define the word living.
Francis Crick
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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
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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.
Francis Crick
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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
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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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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
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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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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
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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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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
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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
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You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.
Francis Crick
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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.
Francis Crick
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Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.
Francis Crick
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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.
Francis Crick
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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
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Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.
Francis Crick