When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.- Joshua Lederberg
We are all very individual. You have to find out what you can do best, and be self-conscious about that.
Try hard to find out what you are good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that.
To have the recognition of your colleagues is great. The public attention is a mixed blessing.
So many of the things I have predicted were technologies that were just sitting right in front of us.
My ambitions were already very clearly fixed by the time I was 6 or 7.
Life's a hobby.
If you wanted to dissect the structure of living cells, genetic analysis was an extremely powerful method, so my interest turned to that.
If you want to solve very complex problems, you will have to end up letting machines work out a lot of the details for themselves, and in ways that we do not understand what they are doing.
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.
If lifespan jumps by 30 or 40 years, that has enormous implications.
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 am not easily inhibited by the fact that I do not know something about a subject. It doesn't stop me from dabbling in it.
I am chairing a UNESCO committee on how to improve global Internet communications for science; help third-world people get onto the Net so they can be part of the process.
I would like to put in a vote for the intrinsic fascination of science.
