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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Robert Winston Quotes

Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can’t talk back.

– Robert Winston

The disturbed individual who believes himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have associated religiosity with neurosis and mental illness.

– Robert Winston

Scientists need to be prepared to engage, and the best people to engage with are students, ideally from primary school because there’s no question that their capacity to work out complex things is extremely good.

– Robert Winston

You can’t be judgmental about babies. They are all have different needs. I was left with an enduring hatred of cheese because it was forced down me when I was young.

– Robert Winston

About 3 million IVF babies have been born since Louise Brown’s birth in 1978. Bizarrely, when this life-giving treatment was first considered, it was massively controversial. A storm of vitriolic protest came from many religious leaders, journalists, politicians, regrettably even other scientists and doctors.

– Robert Winston

I did not study science at school until I was 13, when I was totally turned on by a seemingly dreary old teacher who suddenly, unannounced, manufactured a huge explosion in the middle of a totally boring monologue. From then on, all of his class wanted to make explosions.

– Robert Winston

I don’t think you can impose limits on science because the very nature of homo sapiens is that he – she – is an inquisitive species. You can’t control science. You have to control the effects of science.

– Robert Winston

Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.

– Robert Winston

When I look in the mirror, I am slightly reminded of self-portraits by Durer and by Rembrandt, because they both show a degree of introspection. I see some element of disappointment; I see a sense of humour, but also something that is faintly ridiculous; and I see somebody who is frightened of being found out and thought lightweight.

– Robert Winston

While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain.

– Robert Winston

Surgeons always underestimate the pain and disability involved in what they do to people.

– Robert Winston

We give antibiotics to people when they’re dying or when they’re not well; that’s acting God. I mean, acting God is using the tools of creation to try and improve human life, human existence. I don’t think that that’s a huge problem.

– Robert Winston

I don’t much like being a public figure, because so often how people appear is not how they really are, and I think one of the issues about our society is that we make judgments about people on the basis of very flimsy evidence.

– Robert Winston

Over the past 20 years, I have presented many science programmes on BBC1. But none is, I think, more socially important, or of more human interest, than this ongoing series of ‘Child of Our Time.’

– Robert Winston

Now we have technology where we can modify the genomics of individuals by gene transfer and genetic meddling, we may find that people will want to modify their children, enhance their intelligence, their strength and their beauty and all the other so-called desirable characteristics.

– Robert Winston

When I grew up, we didn’t have a TV, and I think more families today have ambitions of getting out of their environment, such as sending their children to university.

– Robert Winston

Childhood depression tends to be more common in inner cities, being most frequently related to serious social deprivation, bullying, domestic violence, wartime experience and famine. It is, for example, a serious problem among children who are traumatised refugees.

– Robert Winston

I don’t like seeing myself on television and I don’t enjoy filming. What I actually enjoy is thinking about how I am going to express something or how we are going to make the visual metaphor.

– Robert Winston

We are more dependent on science and engineering than at any other time in history. However, there is plenty of evidence that far too many people are scientifically illiterate, often having been put off science at school.

– Robert Winston

I do not know of any credible evidence that suggests Dr. Zavos can clone a human being. This seems to be yet another one of his claims to get publicity.

– Robert Winston

Man is a competitive creature, and the seeds of conflict are built deep into our genes. We fought each other on the savannah and only survived against great odds by organising ourselves into groups which would have had a common purpose, giving morale and fortitude.

– Robert Winston

I used to work for the World Health Organisation in poor countries all over the world – Bangladesh, Korea, the Philippines and India. You learn a whole range of things about how other people are living and try to connect with them to gain an understanding of where they’re coming from.

– Robert Winston

I think that good parenting should allow children to be children. That naivety and slightly open way of looking at the world is very valuable.

– Robert Winston

It is time my colleagues got real. All British universities doing worthwhile research use animals, and, instead of hiding, they should be boasting of their achievements.

– Robert Winston

Far too many scientists, including my good friend Richard Dawkins, present science as the truth and present it as factually correct. And actually, of course, that clearly isn’t true.

– Robert Winston

Robots may cut down on infection and mean a consultant can see more patients, but wouldn’t you rather meet the doctor than a machine?

– Robert Winston

Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they’re made. So, for example, scientists didn’t go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we’re still finding things for a laser to do.

– Robert Winston

Ethics is not routinely taught to science students except in medicine, and I think it should be.

– Robert Winston

I actually don’t mind whether people can choose the sex of the baby – in fact humans have been trying to do it for 3,000 years. But there is a real issue about the safety of the technique.

– Robert Winston

We must not confuse religion with God, or technology with science. Religion stands in relationship to God as technology does in relation to science. Both the conduct of religion and the pursuit of technology are capable of leading mankind into evil; but both can prompt great good.

– Robert Winston

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