Francis Crick Quotes

I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you think it just might be possible to get a handle on this old world after all.

I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me.

The idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

As I'm writing, certain things become clear to me and certain things begin to feel right and make sense. The pieces start to fall into place.

As soon as I did, everything, the whole room, just clicked.

An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the room had leaped into light.

One of the strongest feelings you can get in life--one of the most rewarding feelings--is the feeling of an "Aha, I finally understand."

Like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams of my motor. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrestled from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence.

You can read ten books and finally come across one detail, and it's like, "now everything else makes sense. Now I know where I am."

We sometimes have a flash of understanding that amounts to the insight of genius, and yet it slowly withers, even in our hands - like a flower. The form remains, but the colours and the fragrance are gone.

When the mind grapples with a great and intricate problem, it makes its advances step by step, with but little realization of the gains it has made, until suddenly, with an effect of abrupt illumination, it realizes its victory.

Everything comes to me while I'm sitting on the pot.

When the mind is exhausted in trying to find the answer, the answer dawns.

It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me.

Sentences or solutions occur to me in the shower, or while running on the treadmill, or riding on the subway.

I believe a lot of our lives are spent asleep, and what I've been trying to do is hold on to those moments when a little spark cuts through the fog and nudges you.

Sometimes ideas feel like they were already there, and that you're just discovering them.

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it.

Inspiration is some mysterious blessing which happens when the wheels are turning smoothly.

When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

Every now and then, I strike something that just goes click, you know, in my head. As Gertrude Stein used to say, it rings the bell, and I feel, this is great.

Sometimes the best ideas will come in the least inspiring places.

Inspiration is a really hard thing to describe, but it's something that triggers your brain, like the first time I heard a certain guitar player that I loved or the first time that I saw a monster or the first time that I saw anything that really was an epiphany for me. It just stays with you your whole life.