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Richard Dawkins
(26 Mar 1941 - )
English evolutionary biologist and science writer known for his outspoken opinions as an atheist on creationism. He wrote the best-selling The Selfish Gene, his reformulation of the theory of natural selection.
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Richard Dawkins Quotes on Gene (7 quotes)
>> Click for 48 Science Quotes by Richard Dawkins
>> Click for Richard Dawkins Quotes on | DNA | Evolution | Life |
>> Click for 48 Science Quotes by Richard Dawkins
>> Click for Richard Dawkins Quotes on | DNA | Evolution | Life |
Cheetah genes cooperate with cheetah genes but not with camel genes, and vice versa. This is not because cheetah genes, even in the most poetic sense, see any virtue in the preservation of the cheetah species. They are not working to save the cheetah from extinction like some molecular World Wildlife Fund.
— Richard Dawkins
From Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder (1998), 218.
In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically, those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to survive.
— Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker (1996), 57
It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air. ... [spreading] DNA whose coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds. … It is raining instructions out there; it’s raining programs; it’s raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn’t be any plainer if it were raining floppy discs.
— Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker (1986), 111.
Religion shows a pattern of heredity which I think is similar to genetic heredity. ... There are hundreds of different religious sects, and every religious person is loyal to just one of these. ... The overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one their parents belonged to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained-glass, the best music when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing compared to the matter of heredity.
— Richard Dawkins
From edited version of a speech, at the Edinburgh International Science Festival (15 Apr 1992), as reprinted from the Independent newspaper in Alec Fisher, The Logic of Real Arguments (2004), 82-83.
They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.
— Richard Dawkins
Concluding sentences, Ch. 2, The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition (1976, 2006), 21.
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.
— Richard Dawkins
From Preface to The Selfish Gene (1976, 2006), xxi.
We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.
— Richard Dawkins
In The Selfish Gene (1976).
See also:
- 26 Mar - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Dawkins's birth.
- The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition, by Richard Dawkins. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Richard Dawkins.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
