“Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children.”

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.

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.

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

There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper.

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.

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.

A busy life is a wasted life.

Exploratory research is really like working in a fog. You don’t know where you’re going. You’re just groping. Then people learn about it afterwards and think how straightforward it was.

Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.

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.

Chance is the only source of true novelty.

It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.

In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.

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.

We have to take away from humans in the long run their reproductive autonomy as the only way to guarantee the advancement of mankind.

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

How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.

What is the greatest mistake a parent can make?’ she asked. ‘To believe that your children will be just like you.

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.

Ever since I was a child, I would start crying seeing anyone in pain.

Let’s celebrate every child’s right to play, as it has the power to change lives‬.

You ought not to practice childish ways, since you are no longer that age.

You can’t become a billionaire stepping over children sleeping on the street.

Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up.