James D. Watson QUOTES

1 " Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours. . . . "

― James D. Watson

2 " Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles. "

― James D. Watson , Molecular Biology of the Gene

3 " [As a young man ] I came to the conclusion that the church was just a bunch of fascists that supported Franco. I stopped going on Sunday mornings and watched the birds with my father instead. "

― James D. Watson

4 " [When asked by a student if he believes in any gods]

Oh, no. Absolutely not... The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don't have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to understand. "

― James D. Watson

5 " At lunch Francis winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life. "

― James D. Watson

6 " En la actual polémica, mientras nuestra sociedad se detiene en una ignorancia mojigata, haríamos bien en recordar lo mucho que hay en juego: la salud de los hambrientos y la conservación de nuestro legado más precioso, el medio ambiente. "

― James D. Watson , DNA: The Secret of Life

7 " One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that , in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. "

― James D. Watson , The Double Helix

8 " People say we are playing God. My answer is: If we don't play God, who will? "

― James D. Watson

9 " Briefly, the Indiana biochemists encouraged me to learn organic chemistry, but after I used a bunsen burner to warm up some benzene, I was relieved from further true chemistry. It was safer to turn out an uneducated Ph.D. than to risk another explosion. "

― James D. Watson , The Double Helix

10 " I’ve had strong opinions probably since I was born. It makes you unpopular, but what can you do? "

― James D. Watson

11 " Worrying about complications before ruling out the possibility that the answer was simple would have been damned foolishness. "

― James D. Watson , The Double Helix

12 " On the other hand, the sun of Naples might be conducive to learning something about the biochemistry of the embryonic development of marine animals. "

― James D. Watson , The Double Helix

13 " Most academic battles involve space or faculty appointments and promotions. "

― James D. Watson , Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science

14 " Al Hershey had sent me a long letter from Cold Spring Harbor summarizing the recently completed experiments by which he and Martha Chase established that a key feature of the infection of a bacterium by a phage was the injection of the viral DNA into the host bacterium. Most important, very little protein entered the bacterium. Their experiment was thus a powerful new proof that DNA is the primary genetic material. Nonetheless, almost no one in the audience of over four hundred microbiologists seemed interested as I read long sections of Hershey’s letter. Obvious exceptions were André Lwoff, Seymour Benzer, and Gunther Stent, all briefly over from Paris. They knew that Hershey’s experiments were not trivial and that from then on everyone was going to place more emphasis on DNA. To most of the spectators, however, Hershey’s name carried no weight. "

― James D. Watson , The Double Helix

15 " One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid "

― James D. Watson , The Double Helix

16 " One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. "

― James D. Watson , The Double Helix

17 " The key to Linus’ success was his reliance on the simple laws of structural chemistry. The α-helix had not been found by only staring at X-ray pictures; the essential trick, instead, was to ask which atoms like to sit next to each other. In place of pencil and paper, the main working tools were a set of molecular models superficially resembling the toys of preschool children "

― James D. Watson , The Double Helix

18 " Desde el momento en el que el primero de nuestros antepasados convirtió un palo en una lanza, las consecuencias de los conflictos a lo largo de la historia han sido impuestas por la tecnologia. "

― James D. Watson , DNA: The Secret of Life

19 " I do not like to suffer at all from what I call the German disease, an interest in philosophy. "

― James D. Watson

20 " ...en realidad lo que ha moldeado la historia de la humanidad, al menos a nivel genético, ha sido esa migración femenina realizada paso a paso, de pueblo en pueblo. "

― James D. Watson , DNA: The Secret of Life

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