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The particular thing about science is to combine that [the dreams of obtaining power] with a retreat from the world. Other people want to obtain power by going out into the world, but the scientist really wants to obtain power by retreating from the world.

— Max Delbrück Interview with Max Delbruck (1978)

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More quotes by Max Delbrück

Any living cell carries with it the experiences of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors. You cannot expect to explain so wise an old bird in a few simple words.

If you're too sloppy, then you never get reproducible results, and then you never can draw any conclusions; but if you are just a little sloppy, then when you see something startling, (...) you nail it down (...). So I called it the "Principle of Limited Sloppiness".

Interview with Max Delbruck (1978)

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