Richard Dawkins Quotes About Altruism

Quotes about: Altruism

• Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Philosophical, Thought Provoking

  Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition”, p.9, OUP Oxford

• A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfishness, Would Be, Sitting

  Richard Dawkins (1989). “The Selfish Gene”, p.88, Oxford University Press, USA

• It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfishness, Disguise, Inspection

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.26, Oxford University Press

• Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Generosity, Design

  The Selfish Gene ch. 1 (1976)

• There is another kind of altruism that seems to go beyond that, a kind of super-altruism, which humans appear to have. And I think that does need a Darwinian explanation.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Doe, Needs

  Source: newrepublic.com

• People who criticize The Selfish Gene like that often haven't read it. The selfish gene accounts for altruism toward kin and individuals who might be in a position to reciprocate your altruism.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, People, Might

  Source: newrepublic.com

• Most people understand that sexual lust has to do with propagating genes. Copulation in nature tends to lead to reproduction and so to more genetic copies. But in modern society, most copulations involve contraception, designed precisely to avoid reproduction. Altruism probably has origins like those of lust.

  Richard Dawkins

  People, Lust, Modern

  Source: inters.org

• There is a whole field of inquiry that has come up in the last 30 or 40 years - some call it sociobiology or evolutionary psychology - relating to where we get our moral sense and why we value the idea of altruism, and locating both answers in behavioral adaptations for the preservation of our genes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Ideas, Years, Psychology

  Source: inters.org

• Granted, we may try to help our own family members because they share our DNA. Or help someone else in expectation that they will help us later. But when you look at what we admire as the most generous manifestations of altruism, they are not based on kin selection or reciprocity. An extreme example might be Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chambers. That's the opposite of saving his genes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Opposites, Dna, Expectations

  Source: inters.org

• Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Generosity, Trying

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.25, Oxford University Press

• We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Rebel, Machines

  "The Selfish Gene". Book by Richard Dawkins, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1976.

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