To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.
— James D. Watson
I wanted to see if I could write a good book.
As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all.
I think the reason people are dealing with science less well now than 50 years ago is that it has become so complicated.
Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.
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.
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.
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.
The ever quickening advances of science made possible by the success of the Human Genome Project will also soon let us see the essences of mental disease. Only after we understand them at the genetic level can we rationally seek out appropriate therapies for such illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disease.
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.
Biology has at least 50 more interesting years.
My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.
I have been much blessed.
It's necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.
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.
You move forward through knowledge. You prevail through knowledge. I love the word 'prevail.' Prevail!
