"Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark? Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you cant be criticized, thats very dangerous. The whole Larry Summers thing, to say that men are a bit strange and their strangest quality is their ability to understand mathematics -- youre not supposed to even think it."
James Dewey Watson was an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he and Francis Crick co-authored an academic paper in Nature proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, building on research by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries conc
James Dewey Watson was an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he and Francis Crick co-authored an academic paper in Nature proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, building on research by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries conc
View all quotes by James D. Watson"To make a huge success, a scientist must be prepared to get into deep trouble. Sometime or another, someone will tell you that you are not ready to do something. … If you are going to make a big jump in science, you will very likely be unqualified to succeed by definition. The truth, however, wont save you from criticism. Your very willingness to take on a very big goal will offend some people who will think that you are too big for your britches and crazy to boot."
"The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind."
"I turned against the left wing because they dont like genetics, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail because we have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil system."
"Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we dont have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution."
"To have success in science, you need some luck. But to succeed in science, you need a lot more than luck. And its not enough to be smart — lots of people are very bright and get nowhere in life. In my view, you have to combine intelligence with a willingness not to follow conventions when they block your path forward."
"There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work."