Everyone else started with the bloody diarrhea. Maybe that was the wrong way to think about it.

In my opinion, the double helix is much too simple to be the secret of life. ... Replication is clean while metabolism is messy. By excluding messiness, they excluded the essence of life.

Failure is an essential part of the process. "The way you say this is: 'Please fail very quickly -- so that you can try again'," says Mr Schmidt.

The evidence suggests that from an executive perspective, the most desirable employees may no longer necessarily be those with proven ability and judgment, but those who can be counted on to follow orders and be good "team players."

Any good programmer in a large organization is going to be at odds with it, because organizations are designed to prevent what programmers strive for.

“Many times the problems you see that you try to correct are not the root causes of the problem,” he said.

"A lot of people who are not conventional are not serious. But the real breakthroughs in science are made by serious thinkers who are willing to work on research areas that people think are too controversial or too implausible."

“Think of the kids you don’t have,” Mr. Levchin quoted them as saying. “Think of your unborn grandkids.”

Now, after three billion years, the Darwinian interlude is over.

Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.

"This enemy is better networked than we are.”

I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years.

"The social dimension turns out to be as essential as the scientific."