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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

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
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
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.
FRANCIS CRICK

Dangerous Death Fight Himself Ideas Thinking
You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.
FRANCIS CRICK

Professional Technology Yourself
In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.
FRANCIS CRICK

Experience Intellectual Mathematics
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
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
Anybody who believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old needs psychiatric help.
FRANCIS CRICK

Believe Earth Help Need. Mental Old
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
Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time left for serious thinking.
FRANCIS CRICK

Avoid Serious Temptation Thinking Time
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

Experiment Myself Result Science Team Work
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

Life Science Understand
Evolution is cleverer than you are.
FRANCIS CRICK

Clever Evolution Yourself
Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.
FRANCIS CRICK

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

Average Difficult Paper Reading Science Understand
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

Biology Code Direction Evidence Science
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
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
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
It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid – usually by DNA, although certain small viruses use RNA as their genetic material.
FRANCIS CRICK

Biology Information Material Myself Science
A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.
FRANCIS CRICK

Accomplishment Man Right Time
Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick.
FRANCIS CRICK

Believe Myself Structure
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
Free will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus.
FRANCIS CRICK

Freedom Location
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
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

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Francis Crick Quotes