"When asked to make the formal declaration that I did not intend to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, I was fool enough to reply that I had no such purpose, but that were I to do it by mistake I should be inexpressibly contrite."
Sir Peter Brian Medawar was a British biologist and writer, whose works on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance have been fundamental to the medical practice of tissue and organ transplants. For his scientific works, he is regarded as the "father of transplantation". He is remembered for his wit both in person and in popular writings. Richard Dawkins referred to him as "t
"We shall not read it for its sociological insights, which are non-existent, nor as science fiction, because it has a general air of implausibility; but there is one high poetic fancy in the New Atlantis that stays in the mind after all its fancies and inventions have been forgotten. In the New Atlantis, an island kingdom lying in very distant seas, the only commodity of external trade is — light: Bacons own special light, the light of understanding."
"The bells which toll for mankind are—most of them, anyway—like the bells of Alpine cattle; they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound."
"In no sense other than an utterly trivial one is reproduction the inverse of chemical disintegration. It is a misunderstanding of genetics to suppose that reproduction is only intended to make facsimiles, for parasexual processes of genetical exchange are to be found in the simplest living things."
"The similarity between them is not the taxonomic key to some other, deeper, affinity, and our recognizing its existence marks the end, not the inauguration, of a train of thought."
"If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs."
"No virus is known to do good: it has been well said that a virus is "a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein."