Daniel Nathans Quotes

I was going to be a scientist.

I guess it's inevitable that I would become somebody who would write about scientists.

If a scientist is not befuddled by what they're looking at, then they're not a research scientist.

I did a law degree but was miserable the whole time. I was supposed to join a law firm in London but instead went to Oxford to do a master's in philosophy.

I went into science, ending up with a Ph.D. in cell biology, but along the way I found out that experimental science involves many hours and days and nights of laboratory work, which is a lot like washing dishes, only a little more challenging. I was too impatient, and maybe a little too sloppy, for it.

Looking back on my 50-year eclectic journey in research, I am grateful that it has gone as well as it has, although still not clever enough to open the black box of enzyme structure.

I love to be a scientist. I've always enjoyed being curious.

During this time I had the singular good fortune of being able to discuss the problem constantly with Einstein. Some experiments done at Einstein's suggestion yielded no decisively new result.

Put off your imagination, as you put off your overcoat, when you enter the laboratory. Put it on again, as you put on your overcoat, when you leave.

I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.

We are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game.

I kind of stumbled into acting, even though I've always been fascinated by people and kind of their motives, and it's been amazing to me, everything I read before about psychology, philosophy, just to put it into practice somehow.

I was originally going to become a biochemist, but it just got way too complicated.

I just wanted to be a scientist.

It doesn't matter whether it is chemistry or immunology or neuroscience: I just do research on what I find interesting.

When I began playing around at being a physical chemist, I enjoyed very much doing work on the structure of DNA molecules, something which I would never have dreamed of doing before I started.

I really wanted to do research. That has never changed.

One of the biggest and most important tools of theoretical physics is the wastebasket.

I don't really know how to build a career or what to do. But I have the instinct to keep doing different things so people can see different things.

Turn your churches into halls of science, and devote your leisure day to the study of your own bodies, the analysis of your own minds, and the examination of the fair material world which extends around you!

Some people will know exactly what they want to do at a very young age, but the odds are low. I feel like people in their early- to mid-20s are very earnest. They’re very serious, and they want to feel like they’ve accomplished a lot at a very young age rather than just trying to figure stuff out. So I try to push them toward a more experimental attitude.

Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.

The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.

Scientists will forever have to live with the fact that their product is, in the end, impersonal.

Experimental science is a craft and an art, and part of the art is knowing when to end a fruitless experiment. There is a danger of becoming obsessed with a fruitless experiment even if it goes nowhere.