Joshua Lederberg Quotes

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

The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I got my Nobel Prize for my lab work.

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.

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

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

The central moral issue of science is that we do not have a science of peace and hardly know where to begin in building one.

Everybody has to learn for the first time.

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.

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

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

I was a bad practicing physician because I was never sure of the diagnosis or of the treatment.

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