Life is an error-making and an error-correcting process.

When I worked on the polio vaccine, I had a theory. I guided each [experiment] by imagining myself in the phenomenon in which I was interested. The intuitive realm . . . the realm of the imagination guides my thinking.

If all insects disappeared, all life on earth would perish. If all humans disappeared, all life on earth would flourish.

Risks, I like to say, always pay off. You learn what to do, or what not to do.

There is no such thing as failure, there's just giving up too soon.

Good parents give their children Roots and Wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what's been taught them.

I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution.