If you're too sloppy, then you never get reproducible results, 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), p. 76-77. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives, Pasadena, California.