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

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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
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
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
You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.
FRANCIS CRICK

Existence Science Yourself
Free will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus.
FRANCIS CRICK

Freedom Location
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.
FRANCIS CRICK

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

Believe Earth Help Need. Mental Old
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
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
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
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
A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much.
FRANCIS CRICK

Accomplishment Man Right Time
A busy life is a wasted life.
FRANCIS CRICK

Busy Life One Liner Wasted Time
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
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
It is notoriously difficult to define the word living.
FRANCIS CRICK

Difficult Live World
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
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
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
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
Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.
FRANCIS CRICK

Enemy Knowledge One Liner
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

In the fullness of time, educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after death.

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In the fullness of time, educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after death.

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