A biography for James D. Watsonhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I don't want to die until I see cancer cured.”
“DNA was my only gold rush. I regarded DNA as worth a gold rush.”
“The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God, and so he had no hang-ups about souls.”
“You move forward through knowledge. You prevail through knowledge. I love the word 'prevail.' Prevail!”
“Biology has at least 50 more interesting years.”
“As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all.”
“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.”
“Genetically modified foods are good.”
“I have an odd theory on happiness, and it bothers people. My general theory is that happiness is a reward for an animal doing what it should be doing. So if a horse runs, it feels happy. Or if you are too thin, you can't be happy, because evolution wants you to be tense and anxious, trying to wake up in the morning looking for food.”
“I want to see cancer cured in my lifetime. It might be.”
“Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.”
“The time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes than prevents cancer.”
“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.”
“I wanted to see if I could write a good book.”
“By the age of 11, I was no longer going to Sunday Mass, and going on birdwatching walks with my father. So early on, I heard of Charles Darwin. I guess, you know, he was the big hero. And, you know, you understand life as it now exists through evolution.”
“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.”
“A clone of Einstein wouldn't be stupid, but he wouldn't necessarily be any genius, either.”