I think every person should be able to enjoy life. Try to decide what you most enjoy doing, and then look around to see if there is a job for which you could prepare yourself that would enable you to continue having this sort of joy.

[Professor Pauling] confesses that he had harboured the feeling that sooner or later he would be the one to get the DNA structure; and although he was pleased with the double-helix, he 'rather wished the idea had been his'.

[Instead of collecting stamps, he collected dictionaries and encyclopaedias:] Because you can learn more from them.

I believe all complicated phenomena can be explained by simpler scientific principles.

You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.

Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.