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" 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
Friend
Science
Good
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" We can't any longer have the conventional understanding of genetics which everybody peddles because it is increasingly obvious that epigenetics - actually things which influence the genome's function - are much more important than we realised. "
Robert Winston
Understanding
Important
Influence
" It's extraordinary to think that if you walked into a room and said you had never heard of Hamlet, you would be regarded as a Philistine. But you could walk into the same room and say, 'I don't know what a proton is,' and people would just laugh and say, 'Why should you know?' "
Robert Winston
Think
People
Laugh
" 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. "
Robert Winston
Life
Live
You
" However pragmatic you are, it is very demanding being a new parent. "
Robert Winston
Demanding
You
New
" I remember eating in school in the years after the Second World War. Most of my friends had miserable portions of Spam with an inedible, glutinous pudding served in containers we called 'coffins.' As a vegetarian, I had a lump of loathsome cheese and some bread. "
Robert Winston
Remember
World
Friends
" I like travelling on my own. It means I'm completely free to think about what's around me. "
Robert Winston
Free
Like
Me
" 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
Class
Teacher
Science
" Of course it is a very simple matter to identify genes which might modify intelligence or memory and start thinking about whether you want to enhance a human, and the next generation is going to have to deal with that issue. Should we be trying to enhance humans rather than trying to educate them and so on? "
Robert Winston
Thinking
Intelligence
Memory
" Carbon dioxide is unusual because it doesn't go through the usual three phases of matter, from solid to liquid to gas, but it goes straight from solid to gas. The volume of the gas is much greater than the volume of the solid. When a solid turns into a gas, we say it sublimes. The process is sublimation. "
Robert Winston
Go
Process
Matter
" It is important that legislation keeps pace with scientific progress. "
Robert Winston
Legislation
Pace
Progress
" Women of child-bearing age steadily run out of eggs by the continuous process of cell death. While reading a copy of the 'Guardian' carefully from cover to cover, a normal woman will have lost on average two eggs - while, typically, a normal man will have made 70,000 new sperm. "
Robert Winston
Man
Death
Age
" I think scientific arrogance really does give a great degree of distrust. I think people begin to think that scientists like to believe that they can run the universe. "
Robert Winston
Believe
Great
Like
" 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. "
Robert Winston
More
Medicine
Back
" We must not fail to recognise that television can be a hugely positive influence in children's lives, one of the greatest educators in contemporary society and an increasing influence on all the children followed in 'Child of Our Time.' "
Robert Winston
Society
Child
Children
" Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can't talk back. "
Robert Winston
Parents
Children
Babies
" 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
Think
Parenting
Good
" 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
Conflict
Purpose
Great
" 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
Science
Technology
Relationship
" One of the most important aspects of what makes us who we are is neither straight genes or straight environment but actually what happens to us during development. "
Robert Winston
Important
Us
Development
" 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. "
Robert Winston
Parents
Lost
Child
" It's very clear from Biblical history and Jewish history that Jewish monotheism wasn't developed in an instant, that it became gradually the accepted norm. But undoubtedly, Jewish ancestors were polytheists. "
Robert Winston
Clear
Jewish
History
" My first vote was for a communist in east London when I was a medical student. But I've voted Tory, Labour and Lib Dem in my time. "
Robert Winston
Time
London
Medical
" You can now modify the genes of large animals, and the largest animal we are concerned with is the human. "
Robert Winston
Animal
You
Now
" 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. "
Robert Winston
Rise
Sometimes
Think
" 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
World
You
Health
" 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
Design
Never
Go
" 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
Human
Past
Child
" 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. "
Robert Winston
You
Science
People
" I love the French detective series 'Spiral.' It's quite brutal to watch, but I'm already hooked. "
Robert Winston
Spiral
Brutal
Detective
" Our aggression is a deep instinct which survives in all kinds of manifestations in modern man. "
Robert Winston
Man
Modern
Aggression