Why do we do basic research? To learn about ourselves.

The interaction of the variation in our genes is what's responsible for lots of our attributes and vigor.

Scientists tend to be skeptical, but the weakness of the community of science is that it tends to move into preformed establishment modes that say this is the only way of doing science, the only valid view.

I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.

In 15 years we'll have all the sequence, a list of the genes everyone has in common and those that differ among people. We know only something like a tenth of 1 percent of the sequence at the moment.

The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.

Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being.