Top 82 Francis Collins Quotes
#1. BY INVESTIGATING GOD'S MAJESTIC AND AWESOME CREATION, SCIENCE CAN ACTUALLY BE A MEANS OF WORSHIP. - FRANCIS COLLINS
Louie Giglio
#2. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality.
Sam Harris
#3. 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
#4. So much of what we are currently seeing as far as human suffering and misery comes from diseases that should have been preventable but were not.
Francis Collins
#5. Prayer is, for me, not an opportunity to ask God to do stuff for me. Prayer is an opportunity to open myself, to try and understand his will, and oftentimes it's a prayer of thanksgiving, and sometimes it's a prayer of supplication, and sometimes it is just worship.
Francis Collins
#7. Sometimes you develop a passion for something because of some personal experience.
Francis Collins
#8. Growing up, I was vaguely aware of things that went on in church, because I was in the boys' choir at the local Episcopal church. But I got the clear message that I was supposed to learn music there, and not pay too much attention to the rest of it, and I followed those instructions very carefully.
Francis Collins
#9. Science is ... a powerful way, indeed - to study the natural world. Science is not particularly effective ... in making commentary about the supernatural world. Both worlds, for me, are quite real and quite important. They are investigated in different ways. They coexist. They illuminate each other.
Francis Collins
#10. Scientists must venture outside their comfort zones to show the public how cool - and how important - their work really is.
Francis Collins
#11. 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
#12. There were long stretches of DNA in between genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as "junk DNA," though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome "junk," given our level of ignorance.
Francis S. Collins
#13. What wakes me up at night is this next generation and what's happening to them. And they're invariably excited about the science that they're doing, but invariably anxious about where there's a future.
Francis Collins
#14. The best diet is the one that can be sustained over the long term, combined with other healthful lifestyle behaviors.
Francis Collins
#15. One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron.
Francis Collins
#16. I'm a serious Christian. I take my faith seriously. I try to practice it every day of the week, not just on Sunday.
Francis Collins
#17. 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
#18. Evolution, as a mechanism, can be and must be true. But that says nothing about the nature of its author. For those who believe in God, there are reasons now to be more in awe, not less.
Francis Collins
#19. As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data.
Francis Collins
#20. 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
#21. Science's tools will never prove or disprove God's existence.
Francis Collins
#22. If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, and somebody has already cataloged all the straw in the haystack, when you get to that needle you will recognize it's different than what was supposed to be there based on all that computerized haystack information that had been predetermined for you.
Francis Collins
#23. I don't have a problem with the concept that miracles might occasionally occur at moments of great significance, where there is a message being transmitted to us by God Almighty. But as a scientist, I set my standards for miracles very high.
Francis Collins
#25. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful.
Francis Collins
#26. People who are in a position of finding out that they're at risk for some illness, whether it's breast cancer, or heart disease, are afraid to get that information - even though it might be useful to them - because of fears that they'll lose their health insurance or their job.
Francis Collins
#27. I took care of young adults with cystic fibrosis when I was in my residency training and found this to be a disease that was desperately in need of some explanation.
Francis Collins
#28. By committing the scientific method to religious claims you're committing a logical fallacy
Francis Collins
#29. 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
#30. I think there are people who's lives have been saved because of the study of the genome.
Francis Collins
#31. It is interesting that the U.S. has this very strong proportion of the population that rejects scientific conclusions about the age of the Earth and about evolutionary relationships between species, including humans.
Francis Collins
#32. [Locating, from scratch, the gene related to a disease is like] trying to find a burned-out light bulb in a house located somewhere between the East and West coasts without knowing the state, much less the town or street the house is on.
Francis Collins
#33. Cancer is a disease of the genome. And that's what happens. You make mistakes in a cell somewhere in your body that causes it to start to grow when it should've stopped, and that's cancer. And those mistakes are mistakes of DNA.
Francis Collins
#34. We are still working with an incomplete compass. The time is right to bring the full power of genomics to bear on the problem of cancer.
Francis Collins
#35. For me, in my Christian belief, prayer is not an opportunity to manipulate God into doing what you want him to. Prayer is an opportunity to have a conversation with God to try to get in tune with what his will is.
Francis Collins
#36. What faith has not been used by demagogues as a club over somebody's head?
Francis Collins
#37. The word 'living' has so many connotations that I'm almost reluctant to try to define it scientifically because it sounds as if I'm then downgrading all the other significances of that word.
Francis Collins
#38. In my own experience as a physician, I have not seen a miraculous healing, and I don't expect to see one.
Francis Collins
#39. 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
#40. We give our kids vaccinations. That's a biological enhancement that's considered not just acceptable but actually admirable.
Francis Collins
#41. All illnesses have some heredity contribution. It's been said that genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.
Francis Collins
#42. What more powerful form of study of mankind could there be than to read our own instruction book?
Francis Collins
#43. God gave us free will, and we may choose to exercise it in ways that end up hurting other people.
Francis Collins
#45. 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
#46. Yeah, it's true we're all dealt a set of cards. But it's also true that it's up to us to figure out how to play the hand.
Francis S. Collins
#47. I'm aware there are certain products that are being advertised - food products - with 'no chemicals whatsoever.' Well, that would be pretty hard to arrange, since everything around us is made up of atoms and molecules - chemicals - including ourselves.
Francis Collins
#48. One of the greatest tragedies of our time, is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war
Francis Collins
#49. I actually do not believe that there are any collisions between what I believe as a Christian, and what I know and have learned about as a scientist. I think there's a broad perception that that's the case, and that's what scares many scientists away from a serious consideration of faith.
Francis Collins
#50. Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation.
Francis Collins
#51. As our closest relatives, they (chimpanzees) tell us special things about what it means to be a primate and, ultimately, what it means to be a human at the DNA level.
Francis Collins
#52. 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
#53. If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning?
Francis Collins
#54. What does it take to get people interested, what does it take to get people engaged, what does it take to get them to give a biospecimen? What does it take to get people like Jim [Ostell] to get interested and engaged, versus someone like my mother?
Francis Collins
#55. Patenting tends to get people's juices flowing when you put the word 'gene' and the word 'patent' in the same sentence. And understandably so. This is stuff we're carrying around - all of us - inside all of our cells. Should somebody be able to lay claim to it?
Francis Collins
#56. I finished up my graduate degree in quantum mechanics, but underwent a bit of a personal crisis, recognizing that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. It was too abstract, too far removed from human concerns.
Francis Collins
#57. I'm always feeling like I'm lacking wisdom. This reassurance that one can ask God for that and it will happen is certainly reassuring to me.
Francis Collins
#58. When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, 'Wow, only God knew before.' It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me.
Francis Collins
#59. God is most certainly not threatened by science; He made it all possible.
Francis Collins
#60. As you kind of get over the anxiety about [science and evolution], it actually adds to your sense of awe about this amazing universe that we live in, it doesn't subtract from it at all.
Francis Collins
#61. There are good reasons to believe in God, including the existence of mathematical principles and order in creation. They are positive reasons, based on knowledge, rather than default assumptions based on a temporary lack of knowledge.
Francis Collins
#62. I think God appreciates that we appreciate his creation
Francis Collins
#63. God decided to create a species with whom he could have fellowship. Who are we to say that evolution was a dumb way to do it? It was an incredibly elegant way to do it.
Francis Collins
#64. I believe in the literal rising of the body of Christ. It's the cornerstone of my Christian faith.
Francis Collins
#65. I've never heard God speak out loud to me. That's not an experience I have had.
Francis Collins
#66. My own area of expertise is the genetics of human disease. I was fortunate to be part of the team that found the genes for cystic fibrosis, and Huntington's disease and neurofibromatosis.
Francis Collins
#67. 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
#68. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page.
Francis Collins
#69. 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
#70. I became an atheist because, as a graduate student studying quantum physics, life seemed to be reducible to second-order differential equations. Mathematics, chemistry and physics had it all. And I didn't see any need to go beyond that.
Francis Collins
#71. 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
#72. A discussion about the miraculous quickly devolves to an argument about whether or not one is willing to consider any possibility whatsoever of the supernatural
Francis S. Collins
#73. The blooming of a flower is, in my mind, not a miracle. It's something that we can understand on the basis of molecular biology these days
Francis Collins
#74. If you are in support of in vitro fertilization, then you have to recognize that human embryos are being created in excess of what can be used safely to reimplant for a pregnancy. So they're going to end up being discarded.
Francis Collins
#75. Many people struggle with losing weight and then regaining it. But there is no convincing evidence that the effort to lose weight actually promotes more weight gain in the long run.
Francis Collins
#76. Science's domain is the natural. If you want to understand the natural world and be sure you're not misleading yourself, science is the way to do it.
Francis Collins
#77. [The tests agreed] that I was at higher risk than the average person for Type 2 diabetes, which is what my lab works on. In fact, some of the things they were testing for were variants that we had discovered.
Francis Collins
#78. 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
#79. For delightfully quirky descriptions of bizarre neurological syndromes that teach us a lot about how the brain works, there is no match for Oliver Sacks.
Francis Collins
#80. 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
#81. Successful weight management really means a permanent change in lifestyle - and success in this arena provides that person with a great opportunity to model that behavior for friends and family.
Francis Collins
#82. As an atheist evolving to agnosticism, and seeking answers to whether or not belief in God is potentially rational, my life was turned upside down 35 years ago by reading C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.
Francis Collins
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