“Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.”

I learned the value of hard work by working hard.

For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.

There is no more creative force in the world than the menopausal woman with zest.

We have nowhere else to go, this is all we have.

We – mankind – stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device – our consciousness of the crisis – as our unique contribution.

Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

With the exception of the few cases to be discussed in the next chapter, adolescence represented no period of crisis or stress, but was instead an orderly developing of a set of slowly maturing interests and activities.

We are at a point in history where a proper attention to space, and especially near space, may be absolutely crucial in bringing the world together.

There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing when we save our children, we save ourselves

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

If man has not found ways to deal with environmental problems such as water and air pollution by 1998, it will be too late. The future is not determined and it lies in our own hands.

My grandmother wanted me to get a good education, so she kept me as far away from schools as possible.

Sooner or later I’m going to die, but I’m not going to retire.

Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.

The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.

Just one living cell in the human body is, more complex than New York City.

Biology has at least 50 more interesting years.

In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy and especially dislike reading experimental papers. He seemed to have very strong biological intuitions but unfortunately of negative sign.

It has yet to be shown by direct biochemical methods, as opposed to the indirect genetic evidence mentioned earlier, that the code is indeed a triplet code.

The inspired and expired air may be sometimes very useful, by condensing and cooling the blood that passeth through the lungs; I hold that the depuration of the blood in that passage, is not only one of the ordinary, but one of the principal uses of respiration.

Man comes not from an egg but from an animalcule that is found in male sperm.

For my part, I would say that the male sperm and seeds of plants have been penetrated so far that there is nothing further to discover in this great secret, but I could err in my opinion.