Joshua Lederberg Quotes

In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.

I'm sort of an experimenter; I thought it'd be interesting to play around and see what's there.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.

With science it's very important not to go down the wrong path, but the wrong path in science is a path you go down where everything you learn is already known. So you need to steer around the obvious.

Definition is the death of discovery.

I do try to do high-impact work, and I try to think of ideas people haven't thought about that have broad implications, but I don't restrict myself to that. I try to work on things that I find interesting.

If people like Edison had waited to make every - or Ben Franklin or some of those people had waited to solve every problem on Earth before they did their research or before they were curious about doing something new, we'd never have made a lot of the progress we have.

The most successful people in the world are the ones who thought of that idea that was 'too crazy to work.'

We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off.

None of the great discoveries was made by a 'specialist' or a 'researcher'.

In trying to make something new, half the undertaking lies in discovering whether it can be done. Once it has been established that it can, duplication is inevitable.

I love finding and doing new things and trying stuff out; that's my favorite thing to do.

Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.

Have fun. Do something nobody else had done before, or has done since.

I'm ever curious about the world. I'm driven to go out and find new things to write about. Having a vivid imagination is also a plus.

People have laughed at all great inventors and discoverers.

It's important to have people who will say to you that you're really off the beaten track.

I'm normally drawn to something I haven't done and seen before.

My theory in anything you do is to keep exploring, keep digging deeper to find new stuff.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

My intentions with any of my music is to keep it futuristic and updated and be experimental and try new things.

I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent.

I think you're always trying to challenge yourself to do new things and not repeat yourself.

What really excites me in a project is when it goes in a way you haven't been before.