Harold E. Varmus Quotes

Tobacco, UV rays, viruses, heredity, and age are the main causes of cancer.

My ideal summer day was reading on the porch.

Every cancer looks different. Every cancer has similarities to other cancers. And were trying to milk those differences and similarities to do a better job of predicting how things are going to work out and making new drugs.

A cancer is not simply a lung cancer. It doesn't simply have a certain kind of appearance under the microscope or a certain behavior, but it also has a set of changes in the genes or in the molecules that modify gene behavior that allows us to categorize cancers in ways that is very useful in thinking about new ways to control cancer by prevention and treatment.

Science can improve lives in ways that are elegant in design and moving in practice.

I had learned of Gertrude Steins bon mot that medicine opened all doors. This prompted me, in different moods, to view my future life as literary psychiatrist, globe-trotting tropical disease specialist, or academic internist.

I keep encouraging the pharmaceutical companies to put more money into R&D.

All basic scientists who look to the NCI for funding should know that I will tolerate no retreat on the study of model systems and the pursuit of fundamental biological principles.

Anyone graduating from medical school in 1966 had first to fulfill military service before launching a career. Fiercely opposed to the Vietnam War, I sought to avoid it through an assignment to the Public Health Service.

I had learned that science is a rewarding, active process of discovery, not the passive absorption of what others had discovered.

There are three great themes in science in the twentieth century : the atom, the computer, and the gene.

Following graduation from Amherst, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship enabled me to test the depth of my interest in literary scholarship by beginning graduate studies at Harvard University.

In general, all cancers have been traditionally characterized by the way they appear under the microscope and the organs in which they arise.

I begin with the premise that behavior is an incredibly important element in medicine. Peoples habits, their willingness to quit smoking, their willingness to take steps to avoid transmission of HIV, are all behavioral questions.

Our biggest single theme is trying to make the NIH work better with the same amount of money.