Erwin Chargaff Science Quotations

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'

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

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 character; and, more often than not, he ends up becoming what the German language so appropriately calls a Fachidiot (professional idiot).

There is no question in my mind that we live in one of the truly bestial centuries in human history. There are plenty of signposts for the future historian, and what do they say? They say 'Auschwitz' and 'Dresden' and 'Hiroshima' and 'Vietnam' and 'Napalm.' For many years we all woke up to the daily body count on the radio. And if there were a way to kill people with the B Minor Mass, the Pentagon-Madison Avenue axis would have found it.

If at one time or another I have brushed a few colleagues the wrong way, I must apologize: I had not realized that they were covered with fur.