Joshua Lederberg Quotes

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.

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'm chairing a UNESCO committee on how to improve global Internet communications for science; help third-world people get onto the Net so they can be part of the process.

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

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 was reading five or six years ahead of my grade during public school. I was pretty bored. I made a contract with some of my teachers that if I didn't ask too many questions, I could work in the back of the room.

I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21.

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.

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

I got my Nobel Prize for my lab work.

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.

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

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

Everybody has to learn for the first time.

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

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.

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

Life's a hobby.

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

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

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

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.

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