Science doesn't in the slightest depend on trust. It depends completely on the belief that you can demonstrate something for yourself.

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.

Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.

By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.

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

The best project is one that asks a novel question.

The human's place in the universe will be set in the scheme of evolution, the product of our biological inheritance.