Crick Quotes & Sayings

A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship. — Francis Crick

He lives near me so we do some things together." His throat felt tight. "Well, lots of things, actually. But of course we have our own lives. Both know it's important we don't get in each other's way. It's not like he needs me, needs my help for anything."
"But you do."
Garry turned his head so swiftly, he heard it crick.
"You need him," Emily announced, gravely. "Don't you?"
And while he desperately searched for something to say that would stop this right now, she peered carefully at his shoulders and neck.
"You need him to do your hair, to comb out those very nasty dangles. It's difficult, I know. I can't do my plates on my own."
Max caught Garry's eye. "Tangles," he mouthed. "Plaits. — Clare London

For simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the - class as having one too few. — Francis Crick

Every morning she'd crick herself down onto the flimsy rug by her bed and pray, but it was actually a promise: Today I won't yell, I won't cry, I won't clench up into a ball like I am waiting for a blow to level me. I will enjoy today. She might make it to lunch before she went sour. — Gillian Flynn

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

When you start in science, you are brainwashed into believing how careful you must be, and how difficult it is to discover things. There's something that might be called the 'graduate student syndrome'; graduate students hardly believe they can make a discovery. — Francis Crick

What matters in Politics is what men actually do - sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically, and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results. — Bernard Crick

Dawkins asserts that final causes and design don't really exist. Unguided evolution explains it all. Francis Crick thought the same thing but was afraid people would be misled by what they actually saw. So he issued this warning: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." What? A warning to ignore the obvious? Absolutely. Because if we don't ignore the obvious, we might be tempted to follow common sense and attribute the "appearance" of design to actual design. — Frank Turek

It is amateurs who have one big bright beautiful idea that they can never abandon. Professionals know that they have to produce theory after theory before they are likely to hit the jackpot. — Francis Crick

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

Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice. — Francis Crick

Democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of public affairs. — Bernard Crick

Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupations of free men, and its existences is a test of freedom. — Bernard Crick

The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself. — Bernard Crick

Chance is the only source of true novelty. — Francis Crick

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

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

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

To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there. — Francis Crick

Where government is impossible, politics is impossible. — Bernard Crick

In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of 'reason' as single sources of authority. — Bernard Crick

Democracy: stored up in heaven; but unhappily has not yet been communicated to us. — Bernard Crick

Revolutions as often take place because the old regime simply collapse out of economic inefficiency and bureaucratic rigidity rather than for the reasons given out by their successors taking too much credit, however heroic their actions at the time of crisis (but so often in the past hopeless). — Bernard 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 of these frequencies that generates consciousness, just as tones from individual instruments produce the rich, complex, & seamless sounds of a symphony orchestra — Francis Crick

I'm much too much the popular pet ever since I sang 'Every Nice Girl Loves A Sailor' at the village concert last year. I had them rolling in the aisles. Three encores, and so many bows that I got a crick in the back."
"Spare me the tale of your excesses," I said distantly.
"I wore a sailor suit."
"Please," I said, revolted. — P.G. Wodehouse

It now seems very likely that many of the 64 triplets, possibly most of them, may code one amino acid or another, and that in general several distinct triplets may code one amino acid. — Francis Crick

The populist mode of democracy is a politics of arousal more than of reason, but also a politics of diversion from serious concerns that need settling in either a liberal democratic or a civic republican manner. — Bernard Crick

Since the business of politics is the conciliation of differing interests, justice must not merely be done, but to be seen to be done. — Bernard Crick

All approaches at a higher level are suspect until confirmed at the molecular level. — Francis Crick

The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry. — Francis Crick

Protein synthesis is a central problem for the whole of biology, and that it is in all probability closely related to gene action. — Francis Crick

I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood. Perhaps in other company he is that way, but I have never had reason so to judge him. — James D. Watson

It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As far as I am aware the presently accepted set of twenty amino acids was first drawn up by Watson and myself in the summer of 1953 in response to a letter of Gamow's. — Francis Crick

I think that the formation of [DNA's] structure by Watson and Crick may turn out to be the greatest developments in the field of molecular genetics in recent years. — Linus Pauling

Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children. — Francis Crick

Where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge. — David Brin

A person's mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them. — Francis Crick

A politics of vengeance is not politics. Revenge is a recklessness towards the future in a vain attempt to make the present abolish a suffering which is already past. — Bernard Crick

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

If Watson and I had not discovered the [DNA] structure, instead of being revealed with a flourish it would have trickled out and that its impact would have been far less. For this sort of reason Stent had argued that a scientific discovery is more akin to a work of art than is generally admitted. Style, he argues, is as important as content. I am not completely convinced by this argument, at least in this case. — Francis Crick

The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states. — Bernard Crick

Good things don't always lead to bad ones, Crick. — Deb Caletti

Finally one should add that in spite of the great complexity of protein synthesis and in spite of the considerable technical difficulties in synthesizing polynucleotides with defined sequences it is not unreasonable to hope that all these points will be clarified in the near future, and that the genetic code will be completely established on a sound experimental basis within a few years. — Francis Crick

It doesn't matter if we're young. If you love someone, and it's right ... We can make it the whole way, Crick. — Deb Caletti

Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick. — Francis Crick

At lunch Francis winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life. — James D. Watson

Human beings ... are far too prone to generalize from one instance. The technical word for this, interestingly enough, is superstition. — Francis Crick

Haemoglobin is a very large molecule by ordinary standards, containing about ten thousand atoms, but the chances are that your haemoglobin and mine are identical, and significantly different from that of a pig or horse. You may be impressed by how much human beings differ from one another, but if you were to look into the fine details of the molecules of which they are constructed, you would be astonished by their similarity. — Francis Crick

It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. — Francis Crick

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. — Francis Crick

Dr. Jules Hilbert: Hell Harold, you could just eat nothing but pancakes if you wanted.
Harold Crick: What is wrong with you? Hey, I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led ... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes. — Zach Helm

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

The dream has a very striking way of dealing with the category of opposites and contradictions. This is simply disregarded. To the dream 'No' does not seem to exist. In particular, it prefers to draw opposites together into a unity or to represent them as one. Indeed, it also takes the liberty of representing some random element by its wished-for opposite, so that at first one cannot tell which of the possible poles is meant positively or negatively in the dream-thoughts. — Sigmund Freud

When he unleashes on her everything falls together. Like a crick in the neck snapped into place, the boy's brain pops and is put right. It is a beautiful undoing, a beautiful becoming. He doesn't stop to think about it when the punches follow her down to the ground. He doesn't stop to notice when she goes still or when the pool of blood under her head pillows out into a great, liquid heart. He doesn't stop until he's pulled off her and he doesn't start to think again until that night, when he's back at home. For hours and hours his brain stays beautifully popped into place. — Carolyn Lee Adams

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong — Francis Crick

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

Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own. — Bernard Crick

If you want to understand function, study structure, — Francis Crick

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

The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian. — Bernard Crick

To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance. — Bernard Crick

If the code does indeed have some logical foundation then it is legitimate to consider all the evidence, both good and bad, in any attempt to deduce it. — Francis Crick

It was the same smile he used in bed with Crick
the gentle, sweet smile that made him look young and a little vulnerable. Crick turned the picture around, and Benny had written, I asked him to think of you. — Amy Lane

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

Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking. — Bernard Crick

Gundhrold's head lowered until his massive beak was only inches away from Amos's nose. "I am a son of the desert. This was once my home - the home of all my kind. I know every crag, every slope, every crick and hollow-"
Amos rolled his eyes. "Every blatherin' speck o' sand? — Gillian Bronte Adams

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 clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog. — Francis Crick

How do I know what I think until I hear what I say? — Francis Crick

It now seems certain that the amino acid sequence of any protein is determined by the sequence of bases in some region of a particular nucleic acid molecule. — Francis Crick

A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much. — Francis Crick

One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together. — Francis Crick

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

Never coming back here, she thought.
With a groan, she levered herself into a sitting position and discovered a painful crick in her neck. Never ever. She launched herself off the bed and limped over to the door and put here eye to the viewer, was treated to a fish-eye view of a small, dapper, well-dressed man holding a bunch of white roses.
Okay. Man with flowers. Carey looked around the room. The windows opened on short tethers so guests couldn't throw furniture or each other out into the street, and she was too high to jump anyway. She looked around the room again, looking for possible weapons. There was a rickety-looking chair by the desk in the corner, but it would probably fall to bits even before she hit anyone with it. She looked through the viewer. The little man knocked again. Not urgently, not in an official we-have-come-to-take-you-to-the-gulag kind of way, but in the manner of a gentleman visiting his lady friend with a nice bunch of roses. — Dave Hutchinson

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

Evolution is cleverer than you are. — Francis Crick

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

If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government. — Bernard Crick

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

Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs. — Francis Crick

We are sometimes asked what the result would be if we put four +'s in one gene. To answer this my colleagues have recently put together not merely four but six +'s. — Francis Crick

How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular, to show us how to group the bases into codons. — Francis Crick

The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation. — Bernard Crick

A comparison between the triplets tentatively deduced by these methods with the changes in amino acid sequence produced by mutation shows a fair measure of agreement. — Francis Crick

One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the 'inner contradictions' of such a system. — Bernard Crick

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

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

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

[When asked by a student if he believes in any gods]
Oh, no. Absolutely not ... The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don't have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to understand. — James D. Watson

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist. — Francis Crick

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

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

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

Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one. — Bernard Crick

You can do reverse engineering, but you can't do reverse hacking. — Francis Crick

The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension. — Bernard Crick

It is notoriously difficult to define the word living. — Francis Crick

A busy life is a wasted life. — Francis Crick

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

If the double helix was so important, how come you didn't work on It? Ther husband, Linus Pauling, when the Nobel Prize was awarded to Crick, Watson and Wilkins. — Ava Helen Pauling

What is truly revolutionary about molecular biology in the post-Watson-Crick era is that it has become digital ... the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.' -Richard Dawkins — Matt Ridley