“[As a young man ] I came to the conclusion that the church was just a bunch of fascists that supported Franco. I stopped going on Sunday mornings and watched the birds with my father instead.”

The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers.

Some think there is something wrong about enhancing people.

The pace of discovery is going unbelievably fast.

No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn’t we?

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.

Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them.

I think the reason people are dealing with science less well now than 50 years ago is that it has become so complicated.

No good model ever accounted for all the facts, since some data was bound to be misleading if not plain wrong.

One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

If you succeed with your first dream, it helps. You know, people trust you, possibly, for the second one. They give you a chance to play out your second one.

DNA was my only gold rush. I regarded DNA as worth a gold rush.

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.

The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don’t have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to understand.

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.

Ultimately, we’ll help the people we discriminate against if we try to understand more about them; genetics will lead to a world where there is a sympathy for the underdog.

Never be the brightest person in the room.

It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.

You can cage the songbird, but you can’t make her sing. And you can trap the free bird, but you’ll have to clip her wings.

Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.

I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life – but there was no one to tell me.

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.