Bruce Alberts Quotations

In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because "intelligent design" theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.

We have always underestimated the cell...The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines...Why do we call [them] machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.

This kind of give-and-take lies at the heart of scientific progress and is precisely why scientific analyses are made available in the open literature.

For a grown man with a fully developed personality, try as you might, it's hard to start acting like a different person.

It's very hard for adults to change their personality, and Harvard needs a personality who can get all the faculty and schools to work together for the good of the university.

In the last ten years we have come to realize humans are more like worms than we ever imagined.

The good news, by and large, is that science has prospered.