At lunch Francis [Crick] winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life.

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.

Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.

Knowing "why" (an idea) is more important than learning "what" (the fact).

It's necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.

No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?

We're not all equal, it's simply not true. That isn't science.

Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them.

Our goal should be to understand our differences.

The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers.

Never be the brightest person in the room.

My pants are on fire!

We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.

There is no greater thing in life than that secret sense of harmony that unites us briefly with the great mysteries of others and allows us to travel alongside them for part of the way.

One stroke of lightning does not have to lead anywhere, but to the next stroke of lightning.

That furniture cost me a fortune! It's designer furniture." "Designed by whom ? Darth Vader ? The Hitler Youth ?

Is there a God? No. God is a verb, not a noun.

Tories must end tribalism and divisions.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can't take quiet desperation!

The UK desperately needs less government and freer markets.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.