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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or any kind of potential for any kind of life-form, everything has to be precisely defined on this knife edge of improbability…. [Y]ou have to see the hands of a creator who set the parameters to be just so because the creator was interested in something a little more complicated than random particles.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“I'm a serious Christian. I take my faith seriously. I try to practice it every day of the week, not just on Sunday.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”