Harold E. Varmus Quotes

Tobacco, UV rays, viruses, heredity, and age are the main causes of cancer.

My ideal summer day was reading on the porch.

Science can improve lives in ways that are elegant in design and moving in practice.

I keep encouraging the pharmaceutical companies to put more money into R&D.

All basic scientists who look to the NCI for funding should know that I will tolerate no retreat on the study of model systems and the pursuit of fundamental biological principles.

Following graduation from Amherst, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship enabled me to test the depth of my interest in literary scholarship by beginning graduate studies at Harvard University.

I had learned that science is a rewarding, active process of discovery, not the passive absorption of what others had discovered.

There are three great themes in science in the twentieth century : the atom, the computer, and the gene.

In general, all cancers have been traditionally characterized by the way they appear under the microscope and the organs in which they arise.

Our biggest single theme is trying to make the NIH work better with the same amount of money.

I saw my friends in medical school seeming to be more engaged with the real world. That provoked a sort of jealousy, and I decided to go to medical school after all.