Top 50 Francis Collins Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I believe God did intend, in giving us intelligence, to give us the opportunity to investigate and appreciate the wonders of His creation. He is not threatened by our scientific adventures.”

— Francis Collins

2. “By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.”

— Francis Collins

3. “All illnesses have some heredity contribution. It’s been said that genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.”

— Francis Collins

4. “The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful.”

— Francis Collins

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

— Francis Collins

6. “I think God appreciates that we appreciate his creation.”

— Francis Collins

7. “God is most certainly not threatened by science; He made it all possible.”

— Francis Collins

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

— Francis Collins

9. “God is an awesome mathematician and physicist.”

— Francis Collins

10. “When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, ‘Wow, only God knew before.’ It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me.”

— Francis Collins

11. “Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.”

— Francis Collins

12. “Science’s tools will never prove or disprove God’s existence.”

— Francis Collins

13. “What more powerful form of study of mankind could there be than to read our own instruction book?”

— Francis Collins

14. “The blooming of a flower is, in my mind, not a miracle. It’s something that we can understand on the basis of molecular biology these days.”

— Francis Collins

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15. “I believe in the literal rising of the body of Christ. It’s the cornerstone of my Christian faith.”

— Francis Collins

16. “The airman must possess absolutely untroubled nerves.”

— Francis Collins

17. “It’s interesting when you read the life of Christ how much of his time he spent healing the sick. There must have been a reason for that – he was modelling for us what it is we are intended to do by following his path.”

— Francis Collins

18. “God gave us free will, and we may choose to exercise it in ways that end up hurting other people.”

— Francis Collins

19. “As an atheist evolving to agnosticism, and seeking answers to whether or not belief in God is potentially rational, my life was turned upside down 35 years ago by reading C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.”

— Francis Collins

20. “Evolution, as a mechanism, can be and must be true. But that says nothing about the nature of its author. For those who believe in God, there are reasons now to be more in awe, not less.”

— Francis Collins

21. “Research is so unpredictable. There are periods when nothing works and all your experiments are a disaster and all your hypotheses are wrong.”

— Francis Collins

22. “Scientists must venture outside their comfort zones to show the public how cool – and how important – their work really is.”

— Francis Collins

23. “There are good reasons to believe in God, including the existence of mathematical principles and order in creation. They are positive reasons, based on knowledge, rather than default assumptions based on a temporary lack of knowledge.”

— Francis Collins

24. “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.”

— Francis Collins

25. “A virus is not just DNA; a virus is also packaged up, covered over with a series of proteins in a nice, elegant, well-compacted form.”

— Francis Collins

26. “By committing the scientific method to religious claims you’re committing a logical fallacy.”

— Francis Collins

27. “I’m enormously interested to see where neuroscience can take us in understanding these complexities of the human brain and how it works, but I do think there may be limits in terms of what science can tell us about what does good and evil mean anyway, and what are those concepts about?”

— Francis Collins

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

— Francis Collins

29. “What wakes me up at night is this next generation and what’s happening to them. And they’re invariably excited about the science that they’re doing, but invariably anxious about where there’s a future.”

— Francis Collins

30. “As a scientist, you’re not supposed to make decisions without the data.”

— Francis Collins

31. “Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation.”

— Francis Collins

32. “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.”

— Francis Collins

33. “Prayer is, for me, not an opportunity to ask God to do stuff for me. Prayer is an opportunity to open myself, to try and understand his will, and oftentimes it’s a prayer of thanksgiving, and sometimes it’s a prayer of supplication, and sometimes it is just worship.”

— Francis Collins

34. “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.”

— Francis Collins

35. “I’m always feeling like I’m lacking wisdom. This reassurance that one can ask God for that and it will happen is certainly reassuring to me.”

— Francis Collins

36. “Proponents of intelligent design don’t accept that some of the very complex nanomachines that we have inside ourselves could have come about solely on the basis of natural selection.”

— Francis Collins

37. “Sometimes you develop a passion for something because of some personal experience.”

— Francis Collins

38. “Successful weight management really means a permanent change in lifestyle – and success in this arena provides that person with a great opportunity to model that behavior for friends and family.”

— Francis Collins

39. “I think there are people who’s lives have been saved because of the study of the genome.”

— Francis Collins

40. “God decided to create a species with whom he could have fellowship. Who are we to say that evolution was a dumb way to do it? It was an incredibly elegant way to do it.”

— Francis Collins

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

— Francis Collins

42. “We give our kids vaccinations. That’s a biological enhancement that’s considered not just acceptable but actually admirable.”

— Francis Collins

43. “We are still working with an incomplete compass. The time is right to bring the full power of genomics to bear on the problem of cancer.”

— Francis Collins

44. “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.”

— Francis Collins

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

— Francis Collins

46. “I’m a pretty informal guy. I ride a Harley.”

— Francis Collins

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

— Francis Collins

48. “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.”

— Francis Collins

49. “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.”

— Francis Collins

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

— Francis Collins