Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being.
– Walter Gilbert
By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.
– Walter Gilbert
Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.
– Walter Gilbert
Error is far more common than fraud which probably comprises 1 percent or a tenth of a percent of the literature.
– Walter Gilbert
Everyone wants a hand in the outcome, a piece of the knowledge.
– Walter Gilbert
I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.
– Walter Gilbert
I suggested evolution started off with tiny genes that coded for pieces of proteins and that large pieces of DNA were assembled by adding introns, like glue, to tie the exons together.
– Walter Gilbert
In 15 years we'll have all the sequence, a list of the genes everyone has in common and those that differ among people. We know only something like a tenth of 1 percent of the sequence at the moment.
– Walter Gilbert
In a sense, the human genome program has the same theme. It is the ultimate answer. Nothing in the individual is more causal, more basic.
– Walter Gilbert
It's easier to change what you do than people think it is. If you don't change, your field changes around you.
– Walter Gilbert
Science doesn't in the slightest depend on trust. It depends completely on the belief that you can demonstrate something for yourself.
– Walter Gilbert
Scientists tend to be skeptical, but the weakness of the community of science is that it tends to move into preformed establishment modes that say this is the only way of doing science, the only valid view.
– Walter Gilbert
The best project is one that asks a novel question.
– Walter Gilbert
The human's place in the universe will be set in the scheme of evolution, the product of our biological inheritance.
– Walter Gilbert
The idea that one can create a single subspecies that breeds true and is superhealthy and so on is an illusion.
– Walter Gilbert
The interaction of the variation in our genes is what's responsible for lots of our attributes and vigor.
– Walter Gilbert
The list of genes that will come out of the genome project will be the tool that turns our questions into global ones.
– Walter Gilbert
The really fascinating thing about research is the new science, but to get to it, you have to get past that first level.
– Walter Gilbert
The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.
– Walter Gilbert
This last discovery illuminated the mechanism of protein synthesis: the protein chain is transferred in turn from one amino-acid-bearing transfer RNA to another as it grows, their order dictated by messenger RNA and ultimately by the genetic code on the DNA.
– Walter Gilbert
To construct something as complicated as our bodies, we turn on different genes in muscles, skin, and so on to structure them.
– Walter Gilbert
Today we try to identify a gene and then study its properties.
– Walter Gilbert
We are embedded in a biological world and related to the organisms around us.
– Walter Gilbert
We can learn about the pattern of evolution by looking at the structure of genes and comparing the structure of proteins.
– Walter Gilbert
We haven't been able yet to determine in terms of genes what makes a human being a human and not another mammal.
– Walter Gilbert
We know specific genes are turned on in specific cells, but we don't know to what extent this happens.
– Walter Gilbert
Why do we do basic research? To learn about ourselves.
– Walter Gilbert
With everything I do, I am well advised to repeat the experiment I'm starting from.