Science Quote by Kary Mullis

Law, Mullis suggests, is less a moral compass than a toggle switch: it can unbolt doors or quietly lock them. The verb "shuttles" matters. It implies motion that is routine, almost mechanical, like a commuter train running on schedule. Freedom and captivity aren’t endpoints we reach and keep; they’re conditions we cycle through, often without noticing when the carriage changes.

Coming from a scientist, the line reads like an observation from a lab bench rather than a sermon from a pulpit. Mullis was famously skeptical of institutional authority and allergic to consensus. He treats "law" not as sacred text but as a technology: a system designed to regulate human behavior at scale. Technologies amplify intent. In the right hands, they stabilize life and protect the vulnerable. In the wrong hands, they standardize coercion and make it feel normal, even virtuous.

The subtext is a warning against confusing legality with legitimacy. Law can "free" by setting boundaries around power, guaranteeing rights, creating predictable rules that let ordinary people plan lives. The same machinery can "enslave" by criminalizing dissent, narrowing acceptable identities, or laundering prejudice into procedure. Once coercion is written down, it stops looking like coercion and starts looking like order.

Mullis also smuggles in a darker point about compliance: we often participate in our own constraint because the system promises safety. The shuttle keeps running because we keep buying tickets.