Fears of creating new kinds of plagues or of altering human evolution or of irreversibly altering the environment were only some of the concerns that were rampant.

Looking back, I realize that nurturing curiosity and the instinct to seek solutions are perhaps the most important contributions education can make.

By then, I was making the slow transition from classical biochemistry to molecular biology and becoming increasingly preoccupied with how genes act and how proteins are made.

Novel technologies and ideas that impinge on human biology and their perceived impact on human values have renewed strains in the relationship between science and society.

With time, many of the facts I learned were forgotten but I never lost the excitement of discovery.

But I felt it necessary to be part of the war effort and I enlisted in the Navy to be a flyer.

Today, it is research with human embryonic stem cells and attempts to prepare cloned stem cells for research and medical therapies that are being disavowed as being ethically unacceptable.

Paradoxically, no such embargo exists for the drugs and therapies that have revolutionized the treatment of serious diseases although many of them were created with the same technologies.

But the prospects of designing chemical plants for industrial scale chemical processes seemed far less interesting than the chemical events that occur in biological systems.

Be good and you will be lonesome.

The ocean is a central image. It is the symbolism of a great journey.

Each friend represents a world in us.

I will begin to speak, when I have that to say which had not better be unsaid.

From the east comes the sun, bringing a new and unspoiled day.

Do one thing everyday that scares you. Those small things that make us uncomfortable help us build courage to do the work we do.

That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.

Is there not too much tension in the world at present, and might it not be better if more people were slackers?

Every song I've ever written has been based in reality, based in fact, things that happen to me.

I meddled in things that man must leave alone