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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

James D. Watson Quotes

Biology has at least 50 more interesting years.

– James D. Watson

It’s so difficult writing about living people.

– 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

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

As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all.

– James D. Watson

Some think there is something wrong about enhancing people.

– James D. Watson

It’s necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.

– James D. Watson

My wife and I have a schizophrenic son. We didn’t want to accept this for 30 years, so we put him under great pressure when we shouldn’t have. He just wanted to be looked after, and we didn’t respect that. We tried to make him independent.

– James D. Watson

If someone’s liver doesn’t work, we blame it on the genes; if someone’s brain doesn’t work properly, we blame the school. It’s actually more humane to think of the condition as genetic. For instance, you don’t want to say that someone is born unpleasant, but sometimes that might be true.

– James D. Watson

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

– James D. Watson

We should govern our actions by assuming that people are more good than bad. Whereas, most of our social policies dictate that people are more bad than good. That you know if you do something, it’ll be seized by the rich to exploit the poor.

– James D. Watson

I am thrilled to see my genome.

– James D. Watson

If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them.

– James D. Watson

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.

– James D. Watson

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.

– James D. Watson

An idea can be tested, whereas if you have no idea, nothing can be tested and you don’t understand anything. The molecule that you make when you are getting sunburned or when you eat a lot of food is part of the same molecule that contains an endorphin or an opiate. No one has ever had a hypothesis about why the two are together.

– James D. Watson

Our goal should be to understand our differences.

– James D. Watson

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.

– James D. Watson

I have a son, who is a… not an ordinary form of schizophrenia, but clearly, cannot take care of himself. And the great fear of then, of all parents is, when the parents die, who takes care of your child? And the answer is: they become homeless.

– James D. Watson

Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms – recombinant DNA.

– James D. Watson

You’ve never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.

– James D. Watson

I never could read science fiction. I was just uninterested in it. And you know, I don’t like to read novels where the hero just goes beyond what I think could exist. And it doesn’t interest me because I’m not learning anything about something I’ll actually have to deal with.

– James D. Watson

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.

– 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

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

If you go into science, I think you better go in with a dream that maybe you, too, will get a Nobel Prize. It’s not that I went in and I thought I was very bright and I was going to get one, but I’ll confess, you know, I knew what it was.

– James D. Watson

My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

– James D. Watson

I never wanted to be liked by the majority of people, but there were always some people that I desperately wanted to be liked by. And so you’ve got to behave in a way that… the way I put it is that if you want to be a real intellectual, you’ve got to have someone to save you.

– James D. Watson

I wanted to see if I could write a good book.

– James D. Watson

Science has always been my preoccupation and when you think a breakthrough is possible, it is terribly exciting.

– James D. Watson

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