Francis Crick Quotes

I don't have a particular recommendation other than that we base decisions on as much hard data as possible. We need to carefully look at all the options and all their ramifications in making our decisions.

When you're writing criticism or thinking critically, to draw a very limited minor conclusion from solid evidence is really not thinking.

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.

If you're a good numbers person, you're a bad language person.

I view my role now as providing more of a macro-level skepticism, rather than saying this poll is good or this poll is evil.

I was particularly good at math and science.

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking.

There are people who are good for letters and others that are good for numbers.

First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.

The times call for clear, lucid thinking rather than Clare Luceish thought.

When any one tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle.

Go with the science!.

I am attracted to arguments that have a certain plausible originality to them.

The practice of narrative and argument does not lead to invention, but it compels a certain coherence of thought.

I'm very left-brain.

I'm the type of person who responds to facts.

I have opinions that are based on the facts that are presented to me.

We are not a court - not a judge or jury at work - but we've tried to apply the highest possible standards of rigorous analysis to the evidence where we make a criticism.

My brain kind of works in steps. I have to go through things and then process them and then write about them. I have to understand them first.

I have come to this conclusion: if 'sentimentality' is lazy emotion, then the term itself is lazy criticism.

I enjoy a good reasoned argument. I love the power of logic.

... In a free society, skeptics are the watchdogs against irrationalism - the consumer advocates of ideas. Debunking is not simply the divestment of bunk; its utility is in offering a better alternative, along with a lesson on how thinking goes wrong.