Carl Sagan Quotes

The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.

The nucleic acids, as constituents of living organisms, are comparable In importance to proteins. There is evidence that they are Involved In the processes of cell division and growth, that they participate In the transmission of hereditary characters, and that they are important constituents of viruses. An understanding of the molecular structure of the nucleic acids should be of value In the effort to understand the fundamental phenomena of life.

I hope I'll be remembered for my scientific contribution to understanding life and human life.

Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations.

The origin of each of us stems from codes of genetic inheritance.

Heredity is nothing but stored environment.

Nucleic acids are the main information-carrying molecules of the cell, and, by directing the process of protein synthesis, they determine the inherited characteristics of every living thing. The two main classes of nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA).

You'd need a very specialized electron microscope to get down to the level to actually see a single strand of DNA.

I started doing science when I was effectively 20, a graduate student of Salvador Luria at Indiana University. And that was - you know, it took me about two years, you know, being a graduate student with Luria deciding I wanted to find the structure of DNA; that is, DNA was going to be my objective.

There is also a need that each should understand where he came from and what he is -- and what will become of him.

What more powerful form of study of mankind could there be than to read our own instruction book?

Biology - DNA - is technology. It is coding. It is physical coding, but still code.

There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy.

Genes are biochemical recipes written in a four-letter alphabet called DNA.

Genes are little items that are found in every living thing except Sen. Alfonse D'Amato.

We have come a long way on that old molecule DNA.

Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.

The moment I saw the model and heard about the complementing base pairs I realized that it was the key to understanding all the problems in biology we had found intractable - it was the birth of molecular biology.

The nucleic acids have considerable biological importance because of their role in cell growth and in the transmission of hereditary characters.

Genes are natural resources.

In the 1970s, I did a Ph.D. with Fred Sanger in Cambridge who was in the process of inventing ways to map what's inside DNA. He later won the Nobel Prize.

No man is truly educated unless he knows where he came from, why he is here, and where he can expect to go in the next life.

You can't have life without the genetic code.

DNA is the master blueprint for life and constitutes the genetic material in all free-living organisms and most viruses. RNA is the genetic material of certain viruses, but it is also found in all living cells, where it plays an important role in certain processes such as the making of proteins.

In this atmosphere I soon became interested in nucleic acids.