American Biochemist Quotes

Selman Waksman

Fritz Albert Lipmann

Marshall Warren Nirenberg

Arthur Kornberg

Kary Mullis

Walter Gilbert

Craig Venter

Brains, like cabbages, are beautiful-but in a different way. Cabbage heads are dumb and sterile, whereas brains are personal, intelligent and vibrant.

Carl Pfeiffer (pharmacologist)

The drive and urge to explore nature in all its facets is one of the most important functions of humanity.

Fritz Albert Lipmann

One individual alone creates only a note or so that blends with those produced by others.

Marshall Warren Nirenberg

The highest scientific award and honor presented to me the day before yesterday gives me the opportunity to summarize briefly the discovery and utilization of streptomycin for disease control, notably in the treatment of tuberculosis, the "Great White Plague" of man.

We are living in a sea of chemicals that have not been tested for mutagenicity or carcinogenicity.

Life, after all, is only chemistry, in fact, a small example of chemistry observed on a single, mundane planet.

Arthur Kornberg

Life, like the first blooming, emerges tantalizing to the curious: Why, How, When, Where; Interlocked questions arising from the mysterious encompassing matters quite serious.

No man discovers, except by accident, who isn't inquisitive.

William John Gies

Science. I'm afraid, Dr. Noitall, you do not have any understanding of statistics.

Daniel E. Koshland Jr.

Biology has become a mature science as it has become precise and quantifiable. The biologist is no less dependent upon his apparatus than the physicist.

Neither evolution nor creation qualifies as a scientific theory.

First, nutrition is the master key to human health. Second, what most of us think of as proper nutrition--isn't.

T. Colin Campbell

Rejoice when other scientists do not believe what you know to be true. It will give you extra time to work on it in peace. When they start claiming that they have discovered it before you, look for a new project.

We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.

Strength that has effort in it is not what you need; you need the strength that is the result of ease.

For the past 15 years at ever faster rates we have been digitizing biology. By that I mean going from the analog world of biology through DNA sequencing into the digital world of the computer.

We can look high or we can look low in books or in journals, but the result is the same. The scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system.

The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints. If you simply have a consensus, it generally stultifies. It fails to see the problems of that consensus and it depends on the existence of critics to break up that iceberg and permit knowledge to develop. This is in fact one of the underpinnings of democratic theory. It is one of the reasons why we believe in notions of free speech and it's one of the great forces in terms of intellectual development.

The world amazed me, in that I saw it as I had when I was a child. I had forgotten the beauty and the magic and the knowingness of it and me.

Alexander Shulgin

The first living organisms on Earth doubtless arose in an aqueous environment, and the course of evolution has been shaped by the proper ties of the aqueous medium in which life began.

Albert L. Lehninger

No philosopher's or poet's fancy, no myth of a primitive people has ever exaggerated the importance, the usefulness, and above all the marvelous beneficence of the ocean for the community of living things.

Lawrence Joseph Henderson