Thomas Hunt Morgan

“It is the failure to keep in mind the far-reaching consequences of this Mendelian principle of segregation of the germ-cells that has been responsible for the persistence of the fallacious doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters.”

“The genes are shuffled and dealt anew to each individual. The result is that the offspring has a new combination of characters.”

“It is one of the paradoxes of modern biology that the more we learn about the chemical constitution of the living substance, the more remote seems the possibility of ever producing it.”

“The theory of the gene is not only the most important in biology, but one of the most important in the whole of science.”

“There are two logics: one for the observer and the other for the observed.”

“Science does not progress by the accumulation of data, but by the development of new ways of thinking about it.”

“The most important discovery of modern genetics is that the genes are arranged in a linear order on the chromosomes.”

“We can not afford to be dogmatic about what we know, for what we know is but a small part of what is to be known.”

“Nature makes no leaps.”

“Modern genetics has taught us that the problem of evolution is not so much the production of variation as it is the conservation of it.”

“The study of heredity is a study of the resemblances and the differences between parents and offspring.”

“For an embryologist the study of the cleavage of the egg is a fascinating occupation.”