I have many shortcomings. I feel very lucky to have been able to have what I've had. - Joshua Lederberg
To have the recognition of your colleagues is great. The public attention is a mixed blessing. - Joshua Lederberg
I started on the use of the Internet for scientific communication. Our research group was one of the very first to make really systematic use of it as a way of managing research projects. - Joshua Lederberg
I'm not easily inhibited by the fact that I don't know something about a subject. It doesn't stop me from dabbling in it. - Joshua Lederberg
I believe I am a person with unusual talents. I think I'd be a liar or stupid if I were to deny that. - Joshua Lederberg
I think we have to believe we are here for some purpose, and I know there are many cynics who will deny it, but they don't live as if they deny it. - Joshua Lederberg
A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke. - Joshua Lederberg
I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities. - Joshua Lederberg
I get curious about new things. My real strength is going into a field that has not been investigated before, and finding new approaches to it. - Joshua Lederberg
If you wanted to dissect the structure of living cells, genetic analysis was an extremely powerful method, so my interest turned to that. - Joshua Lederberg
Being successful at a very young age gave me the confidence and the capability to try out other things. - Joshua Lederberg
I'm chairing a UNESCO committee on how to improve global Internet communications for science; help third-world people get onto the Net so they can be part of the process. - Joshua Lederberg
We are all very individual. You have to find out what you can do best, and be self-conscious about that. - Joshua Lederberg
Try hard to find out what you're good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that. - Joshua Lederberg
I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21. - Joshua Lederberg
When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells. - Joshua Lederberg
So many of the things I've predicted were technologies that were just sitting right in front of us. - Joshua Lederberg
If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk. - Joshua Lederberg
If you want to solve very complex problems, you will have to end up letting machines work out a lot of the details for themselves, and in ways that we don't understand what they are doing. - Joshua Lederberg
I was reading five or six years ahead of my grade during public school. I was pretty bored. I made a contract with some of my teachers that if I didn't ask too many questions, I could work in the back of the room. - Joshua Lederberg
As soon as you go into any biological process in any real detail, you discover it's open-ended in terms of what needs to be found out about it. - Joshua Lederberg
I certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling. - Joshua Lederberg