Erwin Chargaff Quotes

77 Sourced Quotes

Many adults, whether consciously or unconsciously, find it beneath their adult dignity to do anything as childish as read a book, think a thought, or get an idea. Adults are rarely embarrassed at having forgotten what little algebra or geography they once learned.

Erwin Chargaff
Science is the attempt to learn the truth about those parts of nature that are explorable.

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
I am not sure whether one can say that man - just as he possesses an almost instinctive sense of symmetry - is governed by an equally elemental desire for simplicity.

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

Erwin Chargaff
Science cannot be a mass occupation, any more than the composing of music or the painting of pictures.

Erwin Chargaff
Scientific fashions last longerthanwomen's fashions but not as long as men's.

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
There is no question in my mind that we live in one of the truly bestial centuries in human history. There are plenty of signposts for the future historian, and what do they say? They say 'Auschwitz' and 'Dresden' and 'Hiroshima' and 'Vietnam' and 'Napalm.' For many years we all woke up to the daily body count on the radio. And if there were a way to kill people with the B Minor Mass, the Pentagon-Madison Avenue axis would have found it.

Erwin Chargaff
The results serve to disprove the tetranucleotide hypothesis. It is, however, noteworthy-whether this is more than accidental, cannot yet be said-that in all desoxypentose nucleic acids examined thus far the molar ratios of total purines to total pyrimidines, and also of adenine to thymine and of guanine to cytosine, were not far from 1.

Erwin Chargaff
Models — in contrast to those who sat for Renoir — improve with age.

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

Erwin Chargaff
Thinking is like catching pigeons with a net. You may pull your rope never so quick sometimes and catch nothing but a feather.

Erwin Chargaff
One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.

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

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

Erwin Chargaff
Like all good things in life, we seem to have noticed the environment only when it began to deteriorate.

Erwin Chargaff
To the scientist nature is like a mirror that breaks every thirty years; and who cares about the broken glass of past times?

Erwin Chargaff
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
A classic in science is a man who no longer has to be quoted.

Erwin Chargaff
When a science approaches the frontiers of its knowledge, it seeks refuge in allegory or in analogy.

Erwin Chargaff
Now one could say, at the risk of some superficiality, that there exist principally two types of scientists. The ones, and they are rare, wish to understand the world, to know nature; the others, far more frequent, wish to explain it. The first are searching for truth, often with knowledge that they will not attain it; the second strive for plausibility, for the achievement of an intellectually consistent, and hence successful, view of the world.

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