James D. Watson Quotes

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James D. Watson

Profession : Scientist

Birth : April 6, 1928

You move forward through knowledge. You prevail through knowledge. I love the word 'prevail.' Prevail!

James D. Watson

My parents made it clear that I should never display even the slightest disrespect to individuals who had the power to let me skip a half grade or move into more challenging classes. While it was all right for me to know more about a topic than my sixth-grade teacher had ever learned, questioning her facts could only lead to trouble.

James D. Watson

A clone of Einstein wouldn't be stupid, but he wouldn't necessarily be any genius, either.

James D. Watson

The time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes than prevents cancer.

James D. Watson

As a child, I lived with being punier than other boys in class. The only consolation was my parents' empathy - they encouraged constant trips to the local drugstore for chocolate milk shakes to fatten me up. The shakes made me happy, but still, all through grammar school, other kids shoved me around.

James D. Watson

It is no coincidence that so many religious beliefs date back to times when no science could possibly have accounted satisfactorily for many of the natural phenomena inspiring scripture and myths.

James D. Watson

I first became aware of Charles Darwin and evolution while still a schoolboy growing up in Chicago. My father and I had a passion for bird-watching, and when the snow or the rain kept me indoors, I read his bird books and learned about evolution.

James D. 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 D. Watson

I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood. Perhaps in other company he is that way, but I have never had reason so to judge him.

James D. Watson

Our goal should be to understand our differences.

James D. Watson

I don't want to die until I see cancer cured.

James D. Watson

I would only once have the opportunity to let my scientific career encompass a path from the double helix to the three billion steps of the human genome.

James D. Watson

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

James D. Watson

Spotting a rare bird is never worth the bite of a cur. Once bitten by a German shepherd, I knew that I preferred cats, even if they are bird-killers. Life is long enough for more than one chance at a rare bird.

James D. Watson

My whole life has been basically trying to find intelligent students or, you know, highly motivated students and giving them an opportunity to do good science.

James D. Watson

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

Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.

James D. Watson

I never dreamed that in my lifetime my own genome would be sequenced.

James D. Watson

I had become monomaniacal about DNA only in 1951 when I had just turned 23 and as a postdoctoral fellow was temporarily in Naples attending a small May meeting on biologically important macromolecules.

James D. Watson

One-third of all female infertility is the result of blocked fallopian tubes. If fertilization could be done in the lab and then the fertilized egg implanted in the womb, it would get around that problem. Millions of women who cannot have children would suddenly be able to.

James D. Watson