Joshua Lederberg Quotes

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Joshua Lederberg

Profession : Scientist

Birth : May 23, 1925

I have many shortcomings. I feel very lucky to have been able to have what I've had.

Joshua Lederberg

Try hard to find out what you're good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that.

Joshua Lederberg

Everybody has to learn for the first time.

Joshua Lederberg

I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities.

Joshua Lederberg

If it takes you 20 or 25 years to establish yourself in one field, you really ought to be careful not to stray too far.

Joshua Lederberg

I started on the use of the Internet for scientific communication. Our research group was one of the very first to make really systematic use of it as a way of managing research projects.

Joshua Lederberg

I hope I've lived a life of science whose style will encourage younger people.

Joshua Lederberg

My ambitions were already very clearly fixed by the time I was 6 or 7.

Joshua Lederberg

All of civility depends on being able to contain the rage of individuals.

Joshua Lederberg

I got my Nobel Prize for my lab work.

Joshua Lederberg

We are all very individual. You have to find out what you can do best, and be self-conscious about that.

Joshua Lederberg

By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks.

Joshua Lederberg

I certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling.

Joshua Lederberg

When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.

Joshua Lederberg

If you wanted to dissect the structure of living cells, genetic analysis was an extremely powerful method, so my interest turned to that.

Joshua Lederberg

I was reading five or six years ahead of my grade during public school. I was pretty bored. I made a contract with some of my teachers that if I didn't ask too many questions, I could work in the back of the room.

Joshua Lederberg

I wish I had a talent for dropping things as well as taking on new ones. It gets to be quite a clutter after a while.

Joshua Lederberg

I get curious about new things. My real strength is going into a field that has not been investigated before, and finding new approaches to it.

Joshua Lederberg

I'm not easily inhibited by the fact that I don't know something about a subject. It doesn't stop me from dabbling in it.

Joshua Lederberg

Being successful at a very young age gave me the confidence and the capability to try out other things.

Joshua Lederberg