A solitary child growing up in Africa, you're really quite dependent on books.

Faith is not a rational thing, and yet to understand the universe, rationality alone will not give it to us. Our understanding of the universe must transcend the rational.

The word 'career' and 'actor' really don't fit in the same paragraph, let alone sentence. There is no career structure for actors.

The universe starts off with the Big Bang theory, and the first thing that emerged from the Big Bang is essentially hydrogen and then helium. And that's what combusts in stars. Finally, stars implode, and they build heavier elements out of that. And those heavier elements are reconstituted in the heart of other stars, eventually.

Neither science, nor the politics in power, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the law nor even the military are in a position to define or control risks rationally.

You see, I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America.

I've made money by just trying to do world-class science. That's the goal that we're setting at Celera. If we do world-class science and create new medicine paradigms, the money will more than follow at a corporate level and at a personal level.

I entered the Physics Department in 1950, receiving a Master's degree in 1953 and a Ph.D. in 1956. It is difficult to convey the sense of excitement that pervaded the Department at that time.