Joshua Lederberg

“I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21.”

“A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke.”

“By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks.”

“Try hard to find out what you're good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that.”

“I think we have to believe we are here for some purpose, and I know there are many cynics who will deny it, but they don't live as if they deny it.”

“I'm not easily inhibited by the fact that I don't know something about a subject. It doesn't stop me from dabbling in it.”

“If you wanted to dissect the structure of living cells, genetic analysis was an extremely powerful method, so my interest turned to that.”

“Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy.”

“I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities.”

“I certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling.”

“When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.”

“If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.”

“As soon as you go into any biological process in any real detail, you discover it's open-ended in terms of what needs to be found out about it.”

“I get curious about new things. My real strength is going into a field that has not been investigated before, and finding new approaches to it.”

“If it takes you 20 or 25 years to establish yourself in one field, you really ought to be careful not to stray too far.”

“I don't believe anybody can really grasp everything that's even in one textbook.”

“I hope I've lived a life of science whose style will encourage younger people.”