Walter Gilbert quotes

Walter Gilbert is an American physicist, biochemist, and molecular biology pioneer. Known for his groundbreaking work on DNA sequencing, he helped advance the field of genetics. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the understanding of genetic material. Here are 24 of his quotes:

The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.

Walter Gilbert

Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being.

Walter Gilbert

Why do we do basic research? To learn about ourselves.

Walter Gilbert

The human's place in the universe will be set in the scheme of evolution, the product of our biological inheritance.

Walter Gilbert

[Duesberg] is absolutely correct in saying that no one has proven that AIDS is caused by the AIDS virus. And he is absolutely correct that the virus cultured in the laboratory may not be the cause of AIDS.

Walter Gilbert

The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints.

Walter Gilbert

I would not be surprised if there were another cause of AIDS and even that HIV is not involved.

Walter Gilbert

Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.

Walter Gilbert

Scientists tend to be skeptical, but the weakness of the community of science is that it tends to move into preformed establishment modes that say this is the only way of doing science, the only valid view.

Walter Gilbert

Science doesn't in the slightest depend on trust. It depends completely on the belief that you can demonstrate something for yourself.

Walter Gilbert

I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.

Walter Gilbert

In 15 years we'll have all the sequence, a list of the genes everyone has in common and those that differ among people. We know only something like a tenth of 1 percent of the sequence at the moment.

Walter Gilbert

The best project is one that asks a novel question.

Walter Gilbert

Today we try to identify a gene and then study its properties.

Walter Gilbert

We haven't been able yet to determine in terms of genes what makes a human being a human and not another mammal.

Walter Gilbert

It's easier to change what you do than people think it is. If you don't change, your field changes around you.

Walter Gilbert

By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.

Walter Gilbert

The interaction of the variation in our genes is what's responsible for lots of our attributes and vigor.

Walter Gilbert

I am afraid that those comments go back to the late 80's.

Walter Gilbert

I am afraid that those comments go back to the late 80's. At that time I was a skeptic - the argument based on Koch's postulates to try to distinguish between cause and association. Today I would regard the success of the many antiviral agents which lower the virus titers (to be expected) and also resolve the failure of the immune system (only expected if the virus is the cause of the failure) as a reasonable proof of the causation argument .

Walter Gilbert

Error is far more common than fraud which probably comprises 1 percent or a tenth of a percent of the literature.

Walter Gilbert