Joshua Lederberg Quotes

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Joshua Lederberg

Profession : Scientist

Birth : May 23, 1925

To have the recognition of your colleagues is great. The public attention is a mixed blessing.

Joshua Lederberg

Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy.

Joshua Lederberg

I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21.

Joshua Lederberg

I think we have to believe we are here for some purpose, and I know there are many cynics who will deny it, but they don't live as if they deny it.

Joshua Lederberg

I believe I am a person with unusual talents. I think I'd be a liar or stupid if I were to deny that.

Joshua Lederberg

As soon as you go into any biological process in any real detail, you discover it's open-ended in terms of what needs to be found out about it.

Joshua Lederberg

I don't believe anybody can really grasp everything that's even in one textbook.

Joshua Lederberg

If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.

Joshua Lederberg

I'd like to put in a vote for the intrinsic fascination of science.

Joshua Lederberg

A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke.

Joshua Lederberg

I'm chairing a UNESCO committee on how to improve global Internet communications for science; help third-world people get onto the Net so they can be part of the process.

Joshua Lederberg

So many of the things I've predicted were technologies that were just sitting right in front of us.

Joshua Lederberg

If you want to solve very complex problems, you will have to end up letting machines work out a lot of the details for themselves, and in ways that we don't understand what they are doing.

Joshua Lederberg

If lifespan jumps by 30 or 40 years, that has enormous implications.

Joshua Lederberg