A biography for Robert Winstonhasn’t been written yet.
“Much as I like and admire Richard Dawkins, I do think that to call a book 'The God Delusion' is very worrying because the title implies that if you don't believe in what I believe then you are 'deluded.' That, I think, is a dangerous concept and one that is unlikely to win hearts and minds.”
“Although religion might be useful in developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion.”
“IVF is very commercial. The people doing it are among the best-paid in medicine: they charge a lot per treatment and it's not in their interest to make it more effective. Having people fail means that they come back again.”
“I'm a traditional Jew with an orthodox background, and it informs much of my approach to science. Of course I think it's very important that if you have those sorts of backgrounds you don't impose them on other people as a clinician, of course.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I went to school with butterflies of fear every day for years - from primary school onwards - not just worried about being bullied by classmates, but by teachers.”
“Following 25 children for the TV series 'Child of Our Time' has been extraordinary. The BBC's original plan was to commemorate the new millennium. What better way than to film a number of expectant mums from across the U.K.? Coming from widely different backgrounds, all were due to give birth on January 1, 2000.”
“However pragmatic you are, it is very demanding being a new parent.”
“In prehistoric times, Homo sapiens was deeply endangered. Early humans were less fleet of foot, with fewer natural weapons and less well-honed senses than all the predators that threatened them. Moreover, they were hampered in their movements by the need to protect their uniquely immature young - juicy meals for any hungry beast.”
“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.”
“It is important that legislation keeps pace with scientific progress.”
“Our aggression is a deep instinct which survives in all kinds of manifestations in modern man.”
“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.”
“By discovering how our minds work, we can improve our learning power and unlock our true potential.”
“I was born with my moustache and, no, I've never been tempted to shave it off. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about my face and, like Gilbert and Sullivan's Katisha, my best feature is my left shoulder-blade.”
“However you define God, and whether you believe in God or not, the world we live in has been shaped by the universal human conviction that there is more to life than life itself; that there is a 'god' shaped hole at the centre of our universe.”
“As parents, can we counter the effect of television violence? One worrying feature in Britain is that so many TV sets are in a child's bedroom; this means that the mediating effect of watching with a parent, the ability to discuss and interpret what has been seen, is lost.”
“I think humans have always wrestled with the Divine Idea - an idea that unites and separates, creates and destroys, consoles and terrifies. Throughout human history, it is an idea that seems sometimes to have caused whole populations to rise up and slaughter one another.”