Selfish Gene Quotes - Page 2

• Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.

  Richard Dawkins

  Life, Birthday, Intelligent

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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one. I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Design, Waiting

  "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design". Book by Richard Dawkins, September 28, 2015.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think we all have a selfish gene which rises to the top, sometimes. But then we're also all capable of a sudden magnanimity.

  Jim Broadbent

  Selfish, Thinking, Sometimes

  5 Copy quote

• Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything.

  Jane Goodall

  Selfish, Genes, Thesis

  Source: www.egonzehnder.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene is a classic example of science fiction.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Selfish, Example, Fiction

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.221, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own. Once this new evolution begins, it will in no necessary sense be subservient to the old.

  Richard Dawkins

  Evolution, Kind, Arise

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene”, p.251, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nature, red in tooth and claw.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Nature, Science, Law

  In Memoriam canto 56 (1850)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science is a victim of its own reductive metaphors: 'Big Bang,' 'selfish gene' and so on. Richard Dawkins' selfish gene fitted with the Thatcherite politics of the time. It should actually be the 'altruistic gene,' but he'd never have sold as many books with a title like that.

  Charles Jencks

  Selfish, Book, Bangs

  7 Copy quote

• I am an enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Genes, Bigs

  Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition”, p.191, OUP Oxford

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Opposites, Society

  "The Blind Watchmaker". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1986.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.

  Matt Ridley

  Selfish, Mind, Evolution

  5 Copy quote

• Leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods express a preference for "natural" methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

  Richard Dawkins

  Leader, Population, Followers

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.144, Oxford University Press

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religion, Survival, Culture

  Richard Dawkins (1989). “The Selfish Gene”, p.193, Oxford University Press, USA

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Selfish-gene theory tells us nothing about the value of interacting through language.

  Noam Chomsky

  Selfish, Language, Genes

  Source: libcom.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source