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You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

Francis Crick

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
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

Bad Evidence Foundation Goodness Legal Logic
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

Believe Difficult Discover Hard Science Start Yourself
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

Evidence Freedom Science System
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.
FRANCIS CRICK

Education Learning People Research Work
In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy and especially dislike reading experimental papers. He seemed to have very strong biological intuitions but unfortunately of negative sign.
FRANCIS CRICK

Biology Experience Experiment Intellectual Mathematics Negative Reading Strong
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.
FRANCIS CRICK

Biology Design Evolution Mindset Science See
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.
FRANCIS CRICK

Honesty Knowledge Life Man Miracle Satisfaction State
Chance is the only source of true novelty.
FRANCIS CRICK

Chance Novel True
In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.
FRANCIS CRICK

Experience Intellectual Mathematics
If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong.
FRANCIS CRICK

Religion Reveal Wrong
God is a hacker, not an engineer.
FRANCIS CRICK

God One Liner Science
A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship.
FRANCIS CRICK

Criticism Friendship Goodness Measurement Science Value
Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.
FRANCIS CRICK

Enemy Knowledge One Liner
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

Escape Eyes Notice Ourselves Possible 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
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.
FRANCIS CRICK

Brain Complication Detail Essential Place See Understand Universe
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
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
A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.
FRANCIS CRICK

Accomplishment Man Right Time
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
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

Brain Man Ourselves Science Study Universe
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

Agreement Comparison Measurement Production
Evolution is cleverer than you are.
FRANCIS CRICK

Clever Evolution Yourself
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

Detail Evidence Ideas Ourselves Science Type
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

Determination Listen Sound Structure Try
Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.
FRANCIS CRICK

Freedom Myself

You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

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You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

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