If you can modify a cell, it's only a short step to modifying a mouse, and if you can modify a mouse, it's only a step to modifying a higher animal, …

- Erwin Chargaff

The narrow slit through which the scientist, if he wants to be successful, must view nature constructs, if this goes on for a long time, his entire c…

- Erwin Chargaff

Science is now the craft of the manipulation, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature. What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, an…

- Erwin Chargaff

Molecular biology is essentially the practice of biochemistry without a license.

- Erwin Chargaff

One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.

- Erwin Chargaff

Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable.

- Erwin Chargaff

The results serve to disprove the tetranucleotide hypothesis. It is, however, noteworthy-whether this is more than accidental, cannot yet be said-tha…

- Erwin Chargaff

When the so-called think tanks began to replace the thought processes of human beings, I called them the aseptic tanks.

- Erwin Chargaff

Outside his own ever-narrowing field of specialization, a scientist is a layman. What members of an academy of science have in common is a certain fo…

- Erwin Chargaff