Francis Crick

Consciousness is somehow a by-product of the simultaneous, high frequency firing of neurons in different parts of the brain. It's the meshing…

— Francis Crick

It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and…

— Francis Crick

It now seems certain that the amino acid sequence of any protein is determined by the sequence of bases in some region…

— Francis Crick

Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the relative order of the bases within…

— Francis Crick

Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time left for serious thinking.

— Francis Crick

I think she [Rosalind Franklin] was a good experimentalist but certainly not of the first rank. She was simply not in the…

— Francis Crick

Haemoglobin is a very large molecule by ordinary standards, containing about ten thousand atoms, but the chances are that your haemoglobin and…

— Francis Crick

In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.

— Francis Crick

Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by…

— Francis Crick

Do codons overlap? In other words, as we read along the genetic message do we find a base which is a member…

— Francis Crick

You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

— Francis Crick

In the fullness of time, educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after…

— Francis Crick

When you start in science, you are brainwashed into believing how careful you must be, and how difficult it is to discover…

— Francis Crick

To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms…

— Francis Crick

If poly A is added to poly U, to form a double or triple helix, the combination is inactive.

— Francis Crick

A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to…

— Francis Crick

A busy life is a wasted life.

— Francis Crick

There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe…

— Francis Crick

It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic…

— Francis Crick

It would appear that the number of nonsense triplets is rather low, since we only occasionally come across them. However this conclusion…

— Francis Crick

Moreover the incorporation requires the same components needed for protein synthesis, and is inhibited by the same inhibitors. Thus the system is…

— Francis Crick

Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don't be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try…

— Francis Crick

How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular,…

— Francis Crick

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of…

— Francis Crick

My own prejudices are exactly the opposite of the functionalists': "If you want to understand function, study structure".

— Francis Crick