Quotes from Max Delbruck

[Physicists] feel that the field of bacterial viruses is a fine playground for serious children who ask ambitious questions.

No amount of study of present forms [of life] would permit us to infer [the existence of] dinosaurs

Molecular genetics, our latest wonder, has taught us to spell out the connectivity of the tree of life in such palpable detail that we may say in plain words, "This riddle of life has been solved."

Any living cell carries with it the experience of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors.