Robert Winston famous quotes

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

#Children #Thinking #World

Whether you're religious or not, there is a real need for other people's religious positions to be treated with the upmost respect.
-- Robert Winston

#Religious #Real #People

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

#Children #Television #Influence

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

#Real #Animal #Achievement

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.
-- Robert Winston

#Feet #Immature #Needs

I've been all over the world on my own because, as a scientist, you travel a great deal if your work is reasonably successful or published. I get invitations to go to all sorts of strange countries where I would mostly be by myself and just meet other people there, instead of having travelling companions.
-- Robert Winston

#Country #Successful #People

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

#Thinking #People #Important

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.
-- Robert Winston

#Worry #Mustache #Faces

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

#Country #Korea #People

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

#Thinking #Television #Metaphor

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

#Publicity #Drs #Claims

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

#Teacher #School #Class

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.
-- Robert Winston

#Children #Numbers #Giving

Childhood is not dead. Children were worse off when we were hunter-gatherers; they were threatened in medieval times and exploited during the Industrial Revolution. Was it any better in the time of Charles Kingsley or Charles Dickens?
-- Robert Winston

#Children #Childhood #Hunters

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

#Three #Phases #Matter

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

#Biblical #Accepted #Jewish History

Medicine, which I wouldn't be without, has also been a force for... less good. For example, if you look at our mishandling of the immune system, using antibiotics in children and avoiding infection, we've certainly increased the risk of asthma.
-- Robert Winston

#Children #Medicine #Risk

I don't believe in regretting - one should try to move on. My mum was good at that. She was deeply in love with my father, and he died when I was nine. She remarried, and her second husband died, too. I saw the grieving process she went through. My mother had this way of moving on. It was a fine trait.
-- Robert Winston

#Mother #Husband #Regret

There needs to be clearer communication for the public avout how valuable it [animal testing] is
-- Robert Winston

#Communication #Animal #Needs

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

#Baby #Hatred #Cheese

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

#Children #Ambition #Thinking

That Britain today is a liberal society is largely because of the philosophy and outlook of the Anglican Church, which did so much to shape our core values in the past few centuries.
-- Robert Winston

#Philosophy #Past #Church

Religion has endured since the dawn of human consciousness precisely because it encompasses so much of being human. No idea has endured so long, gathered up so many disparate needs and wants and feelings, and inspired so many different paths towards understanding it.
-- Robert Winston

#Ideas #Long #Understanding

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

#Memories #Simple #Thinking

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

#Running #Children #Reading

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

#Religious #Personality #Feelings

We live longer and healthier lives than ever before. Animal research has improved the treatment of infections, helped with immunisation, improved cancer treatment and had a big impact on managing heart disease, brain disorders, arthritis and transplantation.
-- Robert Winston

#Cancer #Heart #Animal

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

I don't think we will find a cure for all cancers in the next 50 years let alone 20. I think it's foolishness to say that.
-- Robert Winston

#Cancer #Thinking #Years

Both in Britain and America, huge publicity has been given to stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, and the potential they offer. Of course, the study of stem cells is one of the most exciting areas in biology, but I think it is unlikely that embryonic stem cells are likely to be useful in healthcare for a long time.
-- Robert Winston

#Thinking #Cells #America

Animal rights activists talk about cruelty and torture, some backing their assertions by publishing out-of-date photographs of 'experiments' banned long ago. This is a misrepresentation. The work we do is performed with compassion, care, humanity and humility. I have never seen an animal suffer pain.
-- Robert Winston

#Pain #Humility #Animal

Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can't talk back.
-- Robert Winston

#Baby #Children #Parent

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

#Mean #Cutting #Doctors

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

#Pain #People #Underestimate

There were never any doctors in my family. But my grandparents and my mother had a strong social conscience that was formative.
-- Robert Winston

#Mother #Strong #Doctors

You can now modify the genes of large animals, and the largest animal we are concerned with is the human.
-- Robert Winston

#Animal #Genes #Concerned

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

#Bullying #Children #Cities

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

#Thinking #Issues #People

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

#War #School #Years

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

#Thinking #Laughing #People

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

#Believe #People #Neurosis

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

#Disappointment #Mirrors #Self

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.
-- Robert Winston

#Intuition #Might #Moral

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

#Thinking #Medicine #Taught

It is important that legislation keeps pace with scientific progress.
-- Robert Winston

#Important #Progress #Pace

I love the French detective series 'Spiral.' It's quite brutal to watch, but I'm already hooked.
-- Robert Winston

#Detectives #Watches #Spirals

I like travelling on my own. It means I'm completely free to think about what's around me.
-- Robert Winston

#Mean #Thinking

I don't know whether it is important to study science at a young age, though current thinking emphasises the need.
-- Robert Winston

#Thinking #Important #Age

By discovering how our minds work, we can improve our learning power and unlock our true potential.
-- Robert Winston

#Mind #Discovering

A young woman in her teens has about 300,000 eggs in her ovaries. By the time she is menopausal, none are left.
-- Robert Winston

#Eggs #Ovaries #Teens

My father died when I was nine, but I came from a stable family environment, which I think does contribute to being well-behaved.
-- Robert Winston

#Father #Thinking #Nine

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

#Men #Odds #Giving

My own field, the prevention of genetic disorders in babies, has been possible only because of humane work on animals.
-- Robert Winston

#Baby #Animal #Prevention

Having a child is arguably the most important thing you do in life.
-- Robert Winston

#Children #Important

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

#London #Firsts #East

Our aggression is a deep instinct which survives in all kinds of manifestations in modern man.
-- Robert Winston

#Men #Kind #Modern

I don't believe the fertilised egg can be equated with the sort of human life that you and I represent, or our children represent.
-- Robert Winston

#Children #Believe #Eggs

However pragmatic you are, it is very demanding being a new parent.
-- Robert Winston

#Parent #New Parents #Pragmatic

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

#School #Engineering #People

The trouble with climate change is it's an extraordinarily diverse and complex issue, but for example if the BBC would let me make some of the programmes I'd like to make on climate change, I bet you there would be a change of emphasis.
-- Robert Winston

#Issues #Would Be #Climate

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

#School #Work Out #People

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

#Children #Past #Thinking

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

#Children #Technology #People

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

#Cds #Design #Machines

People think I appear on television to promote my image. That's not fair. I hate filming. I turned down 'Strictly Come Dancing.' But television is a wonderful opportunity to promote scientific ideas. 'Super Doctors' is a very thoughtful piece.
-- Robert Winston

#Hate #Thoughtful #Opportunity