Erwin Chargaff Quotes

#1. He [said of one or other eminent colleagues] is a very busy man, and half of what he publishes is true, but I don't know which half.

Erwin Chargaff

#2. Outside his own ever-narrowing field of specialization, a scientist is a layman. What members of an academy of science have in common is a certain form of semiparasitic living.

Erwin Chargaff

#3. When the so-called think tanks began to replace the thought processes of human beings, I called them the aseptic tanks.

Erwin Chargaff

#4. Science is now the craft of the manipulation, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature. What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, an Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.

Erwin Chargaff

#5. Scientific fashions last longer than women's fashions but not as long as men's

Erwin Chargaff

#6. We manipulate nature as if we were stuffing an Alsatian goose. We create new forms of energy; we make new elements; we kill crops; we wash brains. I can hear them in the dark sharpening their lasers.

Erwin Chargaff

#7. One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.

Erwin Chargaff

#8. Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable.

Erwin Chargaff

#9. Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'

Erwin Chargaff

#10. The narrow slit through which the scientist, if he wants to be successful, must view nature constructs, if this goes on for a long time, his entire character; and, more often than not, he ends up becoming what the German language so appropriately calls a Fachidiot (professional idiot).

Erwin Chargaff

#11. If at one time or another I have brushed a few colleagues the wrong way, I must apologize: I had not realized that they were covered with fur.

Erwin Chargaff

#12. If you can modify a cell, it's only a short step to modifying a mouse, and if you can modify a mouse, it's only a step to modifying a higher animal, even man.

Erwin Chargaff

#13. Molecular biology is essentially the practice of biochemistry without a license.

Erwin Chargaff

#14. The modern version of Buridan's ass [a figurative description of a man of indecision] has a Ph.D., but no time to grow up as he is undecided between making a Leonardo da Vinci in the test tube or planting a Coca Cola sign on Mars.

Erwin Chargaff

#15. You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life.

Erwin Chargaff