Erwin Chargaff Quotes

77 Sourced Quotes

Unpredictable associations and the free play of imagination are no less important in science, that is, in real science, than they are in writing.

Erwin Chargaff
In science you don't ask why, you ask how much.

Erwin Chargaff
In science there is always one more Gordian knot than there are Alexanders.

Erwin Chargaff
With very few exceptions, it is not the men that make science; it is science that makes the men.

Erwin Chargaff
There are few things in the world before which the biochemist feels as uncomfortable as when he has to deal with life itself.

Erwin Chargaff
He [said of one or other eminent colleagues] is a very busy man, and half of what he publishes is true, but I don't know which half.

Erwin Chargaff
A balance that does not tremble cannot weigh.

Erwin Chargaff
Often the regularities in the "laws of nature" are only the reflection of the regularity of the method employed in their formulation!

Erwin Chargaff
There is no real popularization [of science] possible, only vulgarization that in most instances distorts the discoveries beyond recognition.

Erwin Chargaff
I thought it was the task of the natural sciences to discover the facts of nature, not to create them.

Erwin Chargaff
In most sciences the question Why? is forbidden and the answer is actually to the question, How? Science is much better in explaining than in understanding, but it likes to mistake one for the other.

Erwin Chargaff
Great scientific concepts often have an entirely noninductive, dream-like quality.

Erwin Chargaff
In no other science[ than biology] is the span so wide between what it ought to understand and what it can understand.

Erwin Chargaff
Chemists do not have to bother about the sociology of molecules.

Erwin Chargaff
I have always oscillated between the brightness of reality and the darkness of the unknowable.

Erwin Chargaff
The narrow slit through which the scientist, if he wants to be successful, must view nature constructs, if this goes on for a long time, his entire character; and, more often than not, he ends up becoming what the German language so appropriately calls a Fachidiot (professional idiot).

Erwin Chargaff
The scientific professions began to develop a momentum of their own, thereby creating a vested interest in always having more science, bigger science, better-endowed science. This is, incidentally, quite in contrast, for instance, to orchestra musicians whose influence on the number of orchestra pieces being written is minimal.

Erwin Chargaff
Nowadays our sciences, quick and fickle, wear out dogmas in 10 years, and axioms take only a little longer. Bitter Fruits from the Tree of Knowledge

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.

Erwin Chargaff
We can explain it all, but understand only very little.

Erwin Chargaff
The sciences are extremely pedigree-conscious, and the road to the top of Mount Olympus is paved with letters of recommendation, friendly whispers at meetings, telephone calls at night.

Erwin Chargaff
Through each of the great scientific-technological exploits, the points of contact between humanity and reality are diminished irreversibly.

Erwin Chargaff
An observer of our biological sciences today sees dark figures moving over a bridge of glass. We are faced with an ever expanding universe of light and darkness. The greater the circle of understanding becomes, the greater is the circumference of surrounding ignorance.

Erwin Chargaff
If at one time or another I have brushed a few colleagues the wrong way, I must apologize: I had not realized that they were covered with fur.

Erwin Chargaff
Humanity has an enormous capacity to disregard the incomprehensible.

Erwin Chargaff