131 Quotes by James D. Watson

My whole life has been basically trying to find intelligent students or, you know, highly motivated students and giving them an opportunity to do good science.

It is extraordinary the extent to which Darwin's insights not only changed his contemporaries' view of the world but also continue to be a source of great intellectual stimulation for scientists and nonscientists alike.

To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.

The time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes than prevents cancer.

I started doing science when I was effectively 20, a graduate student of Salvador Luria at Indiana University. And that was - you know, it took me about two years, you know, being a graduate student with Luria deciding I wanted to find the structure of DNA; that is, DNA was going to be my objective.

An idea can be tested, whereas if you have no idea, nothing can be tested and you don't understand anything. The molecule that you make when you are getting sunburned or when you eat a lot of food is part of the same molecule that contains an endorphin or an opiate. No one has ever had a hypothesis about why the two are together.

You move forward through knowledge. You prevail through knowledge. I love the word 'prevail.' Prevail!

I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood. Perhaps in other company he is that way, but I have never had reason so to judge him.

I never could read science fiction. I was just uninterested in it. And you know, I don't like to read novels where the hero just goes beyond what I think could exist. And it doesn't interest me because I'm not learning anything about something I'll actually have to deal with.