If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.
From Joshua Lederberg
All of civility depends on being able to contain the rage of individuals.
My ambitions were already very clearly fixed by the time I was 6 or 7.
By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks.
I certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling.
When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.
If you wanted to dissect the structure of living cells, genetic analysis was an extremely powerful method, so my interest turned to that.
I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities.
I was reading five or six years ahead of my grade during public school. I was pretty bored. I made a contract with some of my teachers that if I didn't ask too many questions, I could work in the back of the room.
I wish I had a talent for dropping things as well as taking on new ones. It gets to be quite a clutter after a while.
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