"I can see no practical application of molecular biology to human affairs... DNA is a tangled mass of linear molecules in which the informational content is quite inaccessible."

Frank Macfarlane Burnet Medicine See all quotes by Frank Macfarlane Burnet →

quotekg

React to this quote

More by Frank Macfarlane Burnet

“One of the minor regrets, not really a big regret, is that I’ve never published a paper with Mac Burnet. I’ve published 500 papers, not a single one has Burnet as a co-author. He did not believe in putting his name on a paper if he hadn’t done at least one third of the work himself. A sort of an honest unselfish approach, when it comes time to reap the glory you do it without having someone grabbing it instead of you.”

“I can see no hope at present of such a vaccine being produced... I have adopted a frankly defeatist attitude towards the problem of poliomyelitis and I hope that future developments will prove me wrong... No means of controlling poliomyelitis is at present visible.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Clearly, there are limits on the Executive power. There are limits on the Commander-in-Chief power. Youngstown Sheet and Tube tells us that. That was a case where the President issued an Executive Ord…"

— Raymond Kethledge

Politics1966

#life

"I could think of nothing more insufferable than members of one’s own gang dropping in full of sympathy and their own affairs."

— Agatha Christie

Literature1890–1976

#justice

"When you are defeated it is your own attitude that is wrong."

— Michael Elmore-Meegan

Music1959

#justice

"If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State."

— George Reisman

Economics1937

#justice