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.
JAMES WATSONToday, 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.
More James Watson Quotes
-
-
If scientists don’t play God, who will?
JAMES WATSON -
One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural.
JAMES WATSON -
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.
JAMES WATSON -
There are many people of color who are very talented.
JAMES WATSON -
The pace of discovery is going unbelievably fast.
JAMES WATSON -
DNA was my only gold rush. I regarded DNA as worth a gold rush.
JAMES WATSON -
Knowing “why” (an idea) is more important than learning “what” (the fact).
JAMES 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.
JAMES WATSON -
It’s necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.
JAMES WATSON -
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.
JAMES WATSON -
Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them.
JAMES WATSON -
There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work.
JAMES WATSON -
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.
JAMES WATSON -
The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers.
JAMES WATSON -
A clone of Einstein wouldn’t be stupid, but he wouldn’t necessarily be any genius, either.
JAMES WATSON