Quotes by Jacques Monod

About Jacques Monod:

Jacques Lucien Monod was a French biologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, sharing it with François Jacob and Andre Lwoff "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is f...

Jacques Monod

It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biolo...

Jacques Monod

Among all the occurrences possible in the universe the a priori probability of any particular one of them verges upon zero. Yet the universe exists; particular events must take place in it, the probability of which (before the event) was infinitesima...

Jacques Monod

A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself.

Jacques Monod

The fundamental biological variant is DNA. That is why Mendel's definition of the gene as the unvarying bearer of hereditary traits, its chemical identification by Avery (confirmed by Hershey), and the elucidation by Watson and Crick of the structura...

Jacques Monod

Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere. In effect natural selection operates upon the prod...

Jacques Monod

When one ponders on the tremendous journey of evolution over the past three billion years or so, the prodigious wealth of structures it has engendered, and the extraordinarily effective teleonomic performances of living beings from bacteria to man, o...

Jacques Monod

In science there is and will remain a Platonic element which could not be taken away without ruining it. Among the infinite diversity of singular phenomena science can only look for invariants.

Jacques Monod

Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the wealth they owe to science, our societies are still trying to practice and to teach systems of values already destroyed at the roots by that very science. Man knows at last that he is alone in the indiffere...

Jacques Monod

A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it.

Jacques Monod

...the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity—that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the reli...

Jacques Monod

The future of mankind is going to be decided within the next two generations, and there are two absolute requisites: We must aim at a stable-state society [with limited population growth] and the destruction of nuclear stockpiles. … Otherwise I don...

Jacques Monod

One of the great problems of philosophy, is the relationship between the realm of knowledge and the realm of values. Knowledge is what is; values are what ought to be. I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including Marxism have tri...

Jacques Monod

Author Bio

  • NameJacques Monod
  • DescriptionFrench biologist
  • BornFebruary 9, 1910
  • DiedMay 31, 1976
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Biologist; Biochemist; Geneticist; Physician
  • AwardsOfficer Of The Legion Of Honour; Croix De Guerre 1939–1945; Knight Of The Order Of Academic Palms; Nobel Prize In Physiology Or Medicine; Médaille De La Résistance; Carus Medal; Marjory Stephenson Prize