Quotes By Kary Mullis

I'm not politically correct.

Religion is inwardly focused and driven only to sustain itself.

In the 1950s in Columbia, South Carolina, it was considered OK for kids to play with weird things. We could go to the hardware store and buy 100 feet of dynamite fuse.

People don't realize that molecules themselves are somewhat hypothetical, and that their interactions are more so, and that the biological reactions are even more so.

The horror of it is, every goddamn thing you look at seems pretty scary to me.

I can say exactly what I feel about any issue, and I'm going to do that.

The mystery of that damn virus has been generated by the $2 billion a year they spend on it.

If reincarnation is a useful biological idea it is certain that somewhere in the universe it will happen.

Here's a bunch of people practising a new set of behavioural norms. Apparently it didn't work because a lot of them got sick. That's the conclusion. You don't necessarily know why it happened. But you start there.

People realize this man knows what the hell's going on and nobody else does.

Science has not been successful by making up explanations of things that fit with the current social fabric.

Do we care about these people that are HIV-positive whose lives have been ruined? Those are the people I'm the most concerned about. Every night I think about this.

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.

Law shuttles between freeing us and enslaving us.

Art is subject to arbitrary fashion.

It's not blaming the victim. It's not anybody's fault. They just did something that didn't work, that's all.

You can't ask your pharmacist to stock larger quantities of potassium nitrate because you want to make a bigger rocket.

We are the recipients of scientific method. We can each be a creative and active part of it if we so desire.

I love a microphone and a big crowd; I'm an entertainer, I guess.

Science consistently produces a new crop of miraculous truths and dazzling devices every year.

I like writing about biology, not doing it.

I'm not driven by being understood.

I'm really optimistic in the mornings.

My mother would give my brothers and me a pile of catalogues and let us pick what we wanted for Christmas.

We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.

Sometimes in the morning, when it's a good surf, I go out there, and I don't feel like it's a bad world.

Scientists are doing an awful lot of damage to the world in the name of helping it. I don't mind attacking my own fraternity because I am ashamed of it.

PCR made it easier to see that certain people are infected with HIV.

Science grows like a weed every year.

I've been writing about my boyhood, when I was a little kid back on my grandfather's farm where we didn't know about black widow spiders or all that stuff. But writing about that is so easy.