23 quotes
No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
The genes are the master programmers, and they are programming for their lives.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
No doubt some of your cousins and great-uncles died in childhood, but not a single one of your ancestors did. Ancestors just don't die young!
The Selfish Gene (1976)
Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bares not a single one of the old king's genes.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
It is normally possible to be much more certain who your children are than who your brothers are. And you can be more certain still who you yourself are!
The Selfish Gene (1976)
But you cannot have an unnatural welfare state, unless you also have unnatural birth control, otherwise the end result will be misery even greater than that which obtains in nature.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
What is the selfish gene? It is not just one single physical bit of DNA. Just as in the primeval soup, it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
The truth is that all examples of child protection and parental care, and all associated bodily organs ... are examples of the working in nature of the kin-selection principle.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man?
The Selfish Gene (1976)
Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun, but the full implications of Darwin’s revolution have yet to be widely realized.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
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 a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
... 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.
The Selfish Gene (1976)
Genes do indirectly control the manufacture of bodies, and the influence is strictly one way: acquired characteristics are not inherited. No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch.
The Selfish Gene (1976)