A few quotes on science I’ve read or heard in lectures.


A good idea is like a good joke. They both have a spark. They make a connection. They require a certain suspension of one’s conventional thinking […] and I think it also requires a playfulness to have good ideas.
- Jeremy Nathans, Creativity in Science


“Cell biologists look; geneticists count; biochemists clean,” the scientist Arthur Kornberg once said. […] Watson and Crick played. They worked methodically, diligently, and carefully— but left enough room for their key strength: lightness. If they were to win this race, it would be through whimsy and intuition; they would laugh their way to DNA.
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene


To have one experiment that works, and keep doing it all the time.
- Alfred Hershey, describing scientific happiness (“Hershey heaven”)


kT giveth, and kT taketh away.
- Harry Noller, lecture at JHMI