A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke.
Joshua Lederberg

All of civility depends on being able to contain the rage of individuals.
Joshua Lederberg

Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy.
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

Being successful at a very young age gave me the confidence and the capability to try out other things.
Joshua Lederberg

By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks.
Joshua Lederberg

Everybody has to learn for the first time.
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 certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling.
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 don't believe anybody can really grasp everything that's even in one textbook.
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

I got my Nobel Prize for my lab work.
Joshua Lederberg

I have many shortcomings. I feel very lucky to have been able to have what I've had.
Joshua Lederberg

I hope I've lived a life of science whose style will encourage younger people.
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 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

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

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

I wish I had a talent for dropping things as well as taking on new ones. It gets to be quite a clutter after a while.
Joshua Lederberg