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The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.

Francis Crick

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

Country Earth Myself Opinion People Scare World
Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.
FRANCIS CRICK

Freedom Myself
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

Human Kind Man Reproduction Run
If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong.
FRANCIS CRICK

Religion Reveal Wrong
The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.
FRANCIS CRICK

Dangerous Death Fight Himself Ideas Thinking
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

Oneself Simplicity Thinking
My own prejudices are exactly the opposite of the functionalists’: “If you want to understand function, study structure”.
FRANCIS CRICK

Function Prejudice Science Study Understand Yourself
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

Age Balance Earth Fundamental Impossible Intellectual Knowledge Record True
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

Body Death Education People Soul Time
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

Appearance Nature Ourselves Security
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

Expression Motivational Myself Strong Work
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

Argument Experiment Impression Negative Possible
You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.
FRANCIS CRICK

Professional Technology Yourself
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

Action Biology Problem
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

Division Group Science
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

Drama Easy Enlightenment Experience Feeling Place

The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.

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The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.

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