“If I had been married earlier in life, I wouldn’t have seen the double helix. I would have been taking care of the kids on Saturday. On the other hand, I was lonely a lot of the time.”

I turned against the left wing because they don’t like genetics, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail because we have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil system.

If scientists don’t play God, who will?

I have been much blessed.

Knowing “why” (an idea) is more important than learning “what” (the fact).

We’re not all equal, it’s simply not true. That isn’t science.

Biology has at least 50 more interesting years.

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural.

I don’t think we are here for anything. We’re just products of evolution. You can say, “Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don’t think there’s a purpose.” But I’m anticipating a good lunch.

The brain, is the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.

There are many people of color who are very talented.

Nothing new that is really interesting comes without collaboration.

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.

There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

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.

There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work.

Science that leads over the horizon depends on gathering the best minds and enabling them to do what the best minds naturally seek to do: pursue the most thrilling questions of the time.