48 quotes
The brain, is the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.
No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?
If you really look at it, there's no way your life could be more messed up than by having a child who can't take care of themselves.
The tendency is to focus on the worst-case scenario and to shy away from potentially controversial science; it is time, I think, we looked instead at the benefits.
DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003)
The law has always had difficulty assimilating the implications, if not the very idea, of scientific evidence. Even the most intelligent lawyers, judges, and juries have customarily found it difficult to understand at first.
DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003)
People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.
We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things.
To question genetic intelligence is not racism (2007)
Be sure you have someone up your sleeve who will save you when you find yourself in deep s—.
Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb (1993)
Life, we now know, is nothing but a vast array of coordinated chemical reactions. The “secret” to that coordination is the breathtakingly complex set of instructions inscribed—again, chemically—in our DNA.
DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003)
Never postpone experiments that have clearly defined future benefits for fear of dangers that can't be quantified. Though it may sound at first uncaring, we can react rationally only to real (as opposed to hypothetical) risks.
I'm not good enough to do something I dislike. In fact, I find it hard enough to do something that I like.
Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb (1993)
This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers.
To question genetic intelligence is not racism (2007)
Neither Francis nor I were ever thinking ahead five years. ... Science is moving so fast.
If we don't play God, who will?
The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities (1996)
Never do anything that bores you.
Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb (1993)
With its direct contradiction of religious accounts of creation, evolution represents science’s most direct incursion into the religious domain and accordingly provokes the acute defensiveness that characterizes creationism.
DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003)
No doubt the person whose experimental skill will eventually bring forth a clonal baby will be given wide notoriety. But the child who grows up knowing that the world wants another Picasso may view his creator in a different light.
Moving toward the Clonal Man (1971)
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.
The Double Helix (1968)
Since 1978, when a pail of water was dumped over my Harvard friend E. O. Wilson for saying that genes influence human behaviour, the assault against human behavioural genetics by wishful thinking has remained vigorous.
To question genetic intelligence is not racism (2007)
Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.