James Dewey Watson Quotes

48 Sourced Quotes

To succeed in science, you have to avoid dumb people (here I was still following Luria's example). Now that might sound inexcusably flip, but the fact is that you must always turn to people who are brighter than yourself.

James Dewey Watson
Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.

James Dewey Watson
I've seen no evidence of a god, so I'm not going to think about one.
Being raised nonreligious made you free. You could look at the evidence. Whether being nonreligious or a Democrat was more important, I can't tell you.

James Dewey Watson
Science Ph. D. students have effectively become serfs. And who would become a serf when you can work for Goldman Sachs and get paid $300,000 a year to become a serf? Why drive a Chevy when you can drive a BMW — and now you're condemned to driving a car from Malaysia or something. Life should be fun.

James Dewey Watson
Never do anything that bores you. My experience in science is that someone is always telling to do something that leaves you flat. Bad idea. I'm not good enough to do something I dislike. In fact, I find it hard enough to do something that I like. … Constantly exposing your ideas to informed criticism is very important, and I would venture to say that one reason both of our chief competitors failed to reach the Double Helix before us was that each was effectively very isolated.

James Dewey Watson
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

James Dewey Watson
Let's put it this way: I wouldn't buy gene-splicing stock for my grandmother.

James Dewey Watson
The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God.

James Dewey Watson
Be sure you have someone up your sleeve who will save you when you find yourself in deep s—.

James Dewey Watson
If you could make people with ten-point-higher IQs, we'd probably have fewer wars.

James Dewey Watson
This [double helix] structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.... It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.

James Dewey Watson
No good model ever accounted for all the facts, since some data was bound to be misleading if not plain wrong.

James Dewey Watson
Watson: But legalities aside, I think we must reevaluate our basic assumptions about the meaning of life. Perhaps, as my former colleague Francis Crick suggested, no one should be though alive until about three days after birth.

James Dewey Watson
If you can't be criticized, that's very dangerous.

James Dewey Watson
Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them.

James Dewey Watson
People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.

James Dewey Watson
Imagination comes first in both artistic and scientific creations, but in science there is only one answer and that has to be correct.

James Dewey Watson
There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

James Dewey Watson
Good science as a way of life is sometimes difficult. It often is hard to have confidence that you really know where the future lies. We must thus believe strongly in our ideas, often to point where they may seem tiresome and bothersome and even arrogant to our colleagues.

James Dewey Watson
We used to think our fate was in our stars. Now we know, in large measure, our fate is in our genes.

James Dewey Watson
Science that leads over the horizon depends on gathering the best minds and enabling them to do what the best minds naturally seek to do: pursue the most thrilling questions of the time.

James Dewey Watson
We have complete confidence that further research of the intensity recently given to genetics will eventually provide man with the ability to describe with completeness the essential features that constitute life.

James Dewey Watson
Knowing "why" (an idea) is more important than learning "what" (the fact).

James Dewey Watson
Evolution itself is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or is supported by logically coherent arguments, but because it does fit all the facts of taxonomy, of palaeontology, and of geographical distribution, and because no alternative explanation is credible.

James Dewey Watson
Never be the brightest person in the room. … We're all imperfect.

James Dewey Watson