Top 50 Robert Winston Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

2. “I think it’s important for scientists to be a bit less arrogant, a bit more humble, recognising we are capable of making mistakes and being fallacious – which is increasingly serious in a society where our work may have unpredictable consequences.”

— Robert Winston

3. “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

4. “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

5. “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

6. “Ethics is not routinely taught to science students except in medicine, and I think it should be.”

— Robert Winston

7. “I love the French detective series ‘Spiral.’ It’s quite brutal to watch, but I’m already hooked.”

— Robert Winston

8. “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

9. “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

10. “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

11. “Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can’t talk back.”

— Robert Winston

12. “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

13. “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

14. “My own field, the prevention of genetic disorders in babies, has been possible only because of humane work on animals.”

— Robert Winston

15. “I like travelling on my own. It means I’m completely free to think about what’s around me.”

— Robert Winston

16. “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

17. “There were never any doctors in my family. But my grandparents and my mother had a strong social conscience that was formative.”

— Robert Winston

18. “Surgeons always underestimate the pain and disability involved in what they do to people.”

— Robert Winston

19. “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

20. “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

21. “By discovering how our minds work, we can improve our learning power and unlock our true potential.”

— Robert Winston

22. “I don’t know whether it is important to study science at a young age, though current thinking emphasises the need.”

— Robert Winston

23. “Our aggression is a deep instinct which survives in all kinds of manifestations in modern man.”

— Robert Winston

24. “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

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “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

29. “It is important that legislation keeps pace with scientific progress.”

— Robert Winston

30. “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

31. “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

32. “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

33. “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

34. “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.”

— Robert Winston

35. “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

36. “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

37. “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

38. “Having a child is arguably the most important thing you do in life.”

— Robert Winston

39. “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

40. “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

41. “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

42. “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

43. “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

44. “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

45. “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

46. “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

47. “However pragmatic you are, it is very demanding being a new parent.”

— Robert Winston

48. “You can now modify the genes of large animals, and the largest animal we are concerned with is the human.”

— Robert Winston

49. “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

50. “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