Ever since we achieved a breakthrough in the area of recombinant DNA in 1973, left-wing nuts and environmental kooks have been screaming that we will create some kind of Frankenstein bug or Andromeda Strain that will destroy us all.
JAMES WATSONMoving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don’t have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.
More James Watson Quotes
-
-
Racists have often used pseudoscience to justify their socially damaging views; watch these films to see how science, by replacing ignorance with knowledge, can undo that damage.
JAMES WATSON -
The American public is being sold a very nasty bill of goods about cancer.
JAMES WATSON -
As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all.
JAMES WATSON -
Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely.
JAMES WATSON -
I think the reason people are dealing with science less well now than 50 years ago is that it has become so complicated.
JAMES WATSON -
Our goal should be to understand our differences.
JAMES WATSON -
There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work.
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 -
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.
JAMES WATSON -
Some think there is something wrong about enhancing people.
JAMES WATSON -
Do things as soon as you can. If a decision needs to be made, make it. It gives you more time to change your mind.
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 -
For all my life, America was the place to be. And we somehow continue to be the place where there are real opportunities to change the world for the better.
JAMES WATSON -
The pace of discovery is going unbelievably fast.
JAMES WATSON