The day is not far off when we will be able to send a robotically controlled genome-sequencing unit in a probe to other planets to read the DNA sequence of any alien microbe life that may be there.

I don't know if the optimists or the pessimists are right. But, the optimists are going to get something done.

We have learned nothing from the genome.

Most drugs work on only about a third of the population, they do no damage to another third, and the final third can have negative consequences.

Privacy with medical information is a fallacy. If everyone's information is out there, it's part of the collective.

I have the modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry.

Moving forward in science is as much unwinding the distorted thinking of the past as it is putting a clearer idea on the table.

You can't just live in a comfortable little suburban neighborhood and get your education from movies and television and have any perspective on life.

Any virus that's been sequenced today - that genome can be made.

The environment has fallen to the wayside in politics.

The Vietnam War totally turned my life around. Some people's lives were eliminated or destroyed by the experience. I was one of the fortunate few who came out better off.

My soul, how will I recognize you if we meet?

The man who cannot live with charity, sharing other men's pain, is punished by feeling his own with intolerable anguish.

A man like me should carry his burdens alone. If he doesn't people get hurt

I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.

It is difficult in life to be good, and difficult in art to portray goodness. Perhaps we don't know much about goodness.

The best time to set up a new discipline is when the idea is strong.

My only strength is finding something where most people would find nothing.

Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change.

It is necessary to dig deep within oneself to discover the hidden grain of steel called will.

A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.