Quotes from Craig Venter

The pace of digitizing life has been increasing exponentially.

People are comprised of sets of DNA from each parent. If you looked at just the DNA from your father, it wouldn't tell you who you really are.

I was a surf bum wannabe. I left home at age 17 and moved to Southern California to try to take up surfing as a vocation, but this was in 1964, and there was this nasty little thing called the Vietnam War. As a result, I got drafted.

Patents are basically rights to try and develop a commercial product.

We can now diagnose diseases that haven't even manifested in the patient, and may not until the fifth decade of life - if at all.

Every single cancer is a genetic disease. Not necessarily inherited from your parents, but it's genetic changes which cause cancer. So as we sequence the genomes of tumours and compare those to the sequence of patients, we're getting down to the fundamental basis of each individual person's cancer.

You can imagine: 99 percent of your experiments fail for one reason or another.

I don't see any absolute biological limit on human age.

I somewhat joke that I know an awful lot because I learn from my mistakes. I just make a lot of mistakes. It's OK to fail in science just as long as you have the successes to go with the failures.

Transposons are just small pieces of DNA that randomly insert in the genetic code. And if they insert in the middle of the gene, they disrupt its function.

There is a long history of how DNA sequencing can bring certainty to people's lives.

I suppose if there's a set of genes I have, it's detesting authority.

We're a country of laws and rules, and the Supreme Court has ruled that life forms are patentable entities.

Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear. We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature.

The environment has fallen to the wayside in politics.

Since my own genome was sequenced, my software has been broadcast into space in the form of electromagnetic waves, carrying my genetic information far beyond Earth. Whether there is any creature out there capable of making sense of the instructions in my genome, well, that's another question.

We can create new ways to create clean water.

Show me a highly successful person in any field that has gotten there having a weak ego. You have to believe in yourself, and you have to believe in what you're doing.

If I had a weak ego, and doubts about this, the first genome would not yet have been completed with US and UK government funding.

Perfect pitch is genetic. It's 100% genetic.

Early on, when you're working in a new area of science, you have to think about all the pitfalls and things that could lead you to believe that you had done something when you hadn't, and, even worse, leading others to believe it.

The photosynthesis we see with plants is not very efficient. Algaes are more efficient.

When most people talk about biofuels, they talk about using oils or grease from plants.

It's quite comforting to me as an individualist that we're not very close to being clones of one other.