James D. Watson > Quotes

“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

“[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

“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

“[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

“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

“People say we are playing God. My answer is: If we don't play God, who will?”
― James D. Watson

“At lunch Francis winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life.”
― James D. Watson

“I’ve had strong opinions probably since I was born. It makes you unpopular, but what can you do?”
― James D. Watson

“Worrying about complications before ruling out the possibility that the answer was simple would have been damned foolishness.”
― James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

“​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

“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

“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: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

“Most academic battles involve space or faculty appointments and promotions.”
― James D. Watson, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science

“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: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

“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

“Though only about one half the mass of a bacterial virus was DNA (the other half being protein), Avery’s experiment made it smell like the essential genetic material.”
― James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

“a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.”
― James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

“I don’t think we’re for anything, we’re just products of evolution. You can say “Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don’t think there’s a purpose,” but I’m anticipating a good lunch.”
― James D Watson

“There is perhaps no more heartening proof of the role of environment in human intelligence than the Flynn effect, the worldwide phenomenon of upwardly trending IQ, named for the New Zealand psychologist who first described it. Since the early years of the twentieth century, gains have ranged between nine and twenty points per generation in the United States, Britain, and other industrialized nations for which reliable data-sets are available. With our knowledge of evolutionary processes, we can be sure of one thing: we are not seeing wholesale genetic change in the global population. No, these changes must be recognized as largely the fruits of improvement in overall standards both of education and of health and nutrition. Other factors as yet not understood doubtless play a role, but the Flynn effect serves nicely to make the point that even a trait whose variation is largely determined by genetic differences is in the end significantly malleable. We are not mere puppets upon whose strings our genes alone tug.”
― James D. Watson, DNA: The Secret of Life, Fully Revised and Updated

“Yo tengo la intuición de que los humanos somos sencillamente grandes simios con unos cuantos interruptores genéticos exclusivos -y especiales-.”
― James D. Watson, DNA: The Secret of Life

“O. T. Avery was carrying out experiments at the Rockefeller Institute in New York which showed that hereditary traits could be transmitted from one bacterial cell to another by purified DNA molecules.”
― James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

“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: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

“...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

“I am sure this occasionally bothered Francis, even though he obviously knew that most High Table life is dominated by pedantic, middle aged men incapable of either amusing or educating him in anything worthwhile.”
― James D. Watson, The Double Helix

“Pero preocuparse por las complicaciones antes de eliminar la posibilidad de que la respuesta fuera sencilla era una completa tonteria”
― James D. Watson

“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

“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

“I do not like to suffer at all from what I call the German disease, an interest in philosophy.”
― James Dewey Watson