Quote

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

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
Idea
Flood
Easy
Sudden
Feelings
Experienced
Place
Dramatic
Ideas
Enlightenment
Right
Finally
Mind
Unless
Floods
Feeling
Convey

More quotes by Francis Crick

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship.
Francis Crick
Image
You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.
Francis Crick
Image
A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong
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 notoriously difficult to define the word living.
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
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
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
A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.
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
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
Image
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
Image
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
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
Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.
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
The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.
Francis Crick