Francis Collins quotes

Francis Collins is an American physician-geneticist, renowned for leading the Human Genome Project. His work has greatly advanced our knowledge of human genetics and disease. He has also served as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), shaping medical research policy in the United States. Here are 63 of his quotes:

Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

Francis Collins

The best diet is the one that can be sustained over the long term, combined with other healthful lifestyle behaviors.

Francis Collins

Nobody gets argued all the way into becoming a believer on the sheer basis of logic and reason. That requires a leap of faith.

Francis Collins

I'm enormously interested to see where neuroscience can take us in understanding these complexities of the human brain and how it works, but I do think there may be limits in terms of what science can tell us about what does good and evil mean anyway, and what are those concepts about?

Francis Collins

In my own experience as a physician, I have not seen a miraculous healing, and I don't expect to see one.

Francis Collins

I believe God did intend, in giving us intelligence, to give us the opportunity to investigate and appreciate the wonders of His creation. He is not threatened by our scientific adventures.

Francis Collins

God is an awesome mathematician and physicist.

Francis Collins

If God is real, and I believe he is, then he is outside of nature. He is, therefore, not limited by the laws of nature in the way that we are.

Francis Collins

Research is so unpredictable. There are periods when nothing works and all your experiments are a disaster and all your hypotheses are wrong.

Francis Collins

Sometimes you develop a passion for something because of some personal experience.

Francis Collins

Proponents of intelligent design don't accept that some of the very complex nanomachines that we have inside ourselves could have come about solely on the basis of natural selection.

Francis Collins

One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron.

Francis Collins

God gave us free will, and we may choose to exercise it in ways that end up hurting other people.

Francis Collins

When does life begin? When does the soul enter? That's a religious question. Science is not going to be able to help with that.

Francis Collins

It's interesting when you read the life of Christ how much of his time he spent healing the sick. There must have been a reason for that - he was modelling for us what it is we are intended to do by following his path.

Francis Collins

What faith has not been used by demagogues as a club over somebody's head?

Francis Collins

A virus is not just DNA; a virus is also packaged up, covered over with a series of proteins in a nice, elegant, well-compacted form.

Francis Collins

A technological advance of a major sort almost always is overestimated in the short run for its consequences - and underestimated in the long run.

Francis Collins

I trained initially as a physical chemist, and then, after becoming interested in biology, I went to medical school and learned how to be a physician. So, I'm a physician scientist.

Francis Collins

I've never heard God speak out loud to me. That's not an experience I have had.

Francis Collins

I think history would say that medical research has, throughout many changes of parties, remained as one of the shining lights of bipartisan agreement, that people are concerned about health for themselves, for their families, for their constituents.

Francis Collins

I think there are people who's lives have been saved because of the study of the genome.

Francis Collins