Craig Venter

People want to protect the territory that they have, and they're very threatened by change. That's not true for all of scientists, but you know, fortunately, the scientific community moves forward in a conservative fashion. ”

People think they're making individual decisions for themselves and their family not to get vaccinated. It's not just an individual choice - you're a hazard to society. ”

The Janus-like nature of innovation - its responsible use and so on - was evident at the very birth of human ingenuity, when humankind first discovered how to make fire on demand. ”

I naively thought that we could have a molecular definition for life, come up with a set of genes that would minimally define life. Nature just refuses to be so easily quantified. ”

There's a constant debate over nature or nurture - they're inseparable. ”

As a scientist, I clearly see the potential for harnessing the power of nature. ”

Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear. We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature. ”

One important part of scientific training is that scientists learn the boundaries, the safety issues, how to properly deal with and dispose of chemicals and reagents. ”

Even with seemingly simple things like eye color, you can't tell from my genetic code whether I have blue eyes or not. So it's naive to think that complex human behaviors, like risk-seeking, are driven by changes in one or two genes. ”

Human lifespan used to be 30 years, 25 years. But there's no basic, fundamental reason why it has to be short. ”