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We do not know what life is, and yet we manipulate it as if it were an inorganic salt solution...

— Erwin Chargaff Attributed

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More quotes by Erwin Chargaff

Outside his own ever-narrowing field of specialization, a scientist is a layman. What members of an academy of science have in common is a certain form of semiparasitic living.

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1973)

What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, a molecular Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.

You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life.

Letter to the editor of Science (1976)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Erwin Chargaff (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.