[As a young man ] I came to the conclusion that the church was just a bunch of fascists that supported Franco. I stopped going on Sunday mornings and watched the birds with my father instead.

Science has always been my preoccupation and when you think a breakthrough is possible, it is terribly exciting.

It's necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.

No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?

Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.

Do things as soon as you can. If a decision needs to be made, make it. It gives you more time to change your mind.

I think the reason people are dealing with science less well now than 50 years ago is that it has become so complicated.