101 Quotes by Francis Crick

The genetic code describes the way in which a sequence of twenty or more things is determined by a sequence of four things of a different type.

God is a hacker, not an engineer.

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

While Occam’s razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research.

How do I know what I think until I hear what I say?

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.

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.

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong.

The major credit I think Jim and I deserve is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It’s true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.