QUOTES by James D. Watson
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
"I started doing science when I was effectively 20, a graduate student of Salvador Luria at Indiana University. And that was - you know, it took me about two years, you know, being a graduate student with Luria deciding I wanted to find the structure of DNA; that is, DNA was going to be my objective."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"Great wealth could make an enormous difference over the next decade if they sensibly support the scientific elite. Just the elite. Because the elite makes most of the progress. You should worry about people who produce really novel inventions, not pedantic hacks."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"If you go into science, I think you better go in with a dream that maybe you, too, will get a Nobel Prize. It's not that I went in and I thought I was very bright and I was going to get one, but I'll confess, you know, I knew what it was."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"If someone's liver doesn't work, we blame it on the genes; if someone's brain doesn't work properly, we blame the school. It's actually more humane to think of the condition as genetic. For instance, you don't want to say that someone is born unpleasant, but sometimes that might be true."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I never wanted to be liked by the majority of people, but there were always some people that I desperately wanted to be liked by. And so you've got to behave in a way that... the way I put it is that if you want to be a real intellectual, you've got to have someone to save you."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I was always very curious about what a scientist's life was like when I was young. Of course, when I was young, you didn't have very many opportunities to find out with no web, TV. I was very lucky: I was born in the city of Chicago and went to the University of Chicago where I actually saw things."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"An idea can be tested, whereas if you have no idea, nothing can be tested and you don't understand anything. The molecule that you make when you are getting sunburned or when you eat a lot of food is part of the same molecule that contains an endorphin or an opiate. No one has ever had a hypothesis about why the two are together."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I never could read science fiction. I was just uninterested in it. And you know, I don't like to read novels where the hero just goes beyond what I think could exist. And it doesn't interest me because I'm not learning anything about something I'll actually have to deal with."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"We should govern our actions by assuming that people are more good than bad. Whereas, most of our social policies dictate that people are more bad than good. That you know if you do something, it'll be seized by the rich to exploit the poor."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I do think one success of Northern Europe, which the United States came from, was its willingness to accept innovation in business practices like Adam Smith and the whole Enlightenment. It essentially made the merchant class free instead of controlled by the king and aristocracy. That was essential."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"One-third of all female infertility is the result of blocked fallopian tubes. If fertilization could be done in the lab and then the fertilized egg implanted in the womb, it would get around that problem. Millions of women who cannot have children would suddenly be able to."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I have a son, who is a... not an ordinary form of schizophrenia, but clearly, cannot take care of himself. And the great fear of then, of all parents is, when the parents die, who takes care of your child? And the answer is: they become homeless."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"On the other hand, the sun of Naples might be conducive to learning something about the biochemistry of the embryonic development of marine animals."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"You move forward through knowledge. You prevail through knowledge. I love the word 'prevail.' Prevail!"
Quote by -James D. Watson
"If you succeed with your first dream, it helps. You know, people trust you, possibly, for the second one. They give you a chance to play out your second one."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I don't want 100 different cures of cancer. I want, you know, give me five. So if you had, you know, five medicines, you could do away with 90 percent of cancer. That's sort of my objective. I think we're going to do it."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I've had strong opinions probably since I was born. It makes you unpopular, but what can you do?"
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I would only once have the opportunity to let my scientific career encompass a path from the double helix to the three billion steps of the human genome."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"If you accept that people are the products of evolution, then you have to have an open mind to the truth. Unfair discrimination exists whether we like it or not; I wouldn't have married a gum-chewing vegetarian."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"Science has always been my preoccupation and when you think a breakthrough is possible, it is terribly exciting."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"Ultimately, we'll help the people we discriminate against if we try to understand more about them; genetics will lead to a world where there is a sympathy for the underdog."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I had become monomaniacal about DNA only in 1951 when I had just turned 23 and as a postdoctoral fellow was temporarily in Naples attending a small May meeting on biologically important macromolecules."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"My whole life has been basically trying to find intelligent students or, you know, highly motivated students and giving them an opportunity to do good science."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness."
Quote by -James D. Watson
"I think the reason people are dealing with science less well now than 50 years ago is that it has become so complicated."
Quote by -James D. Watson