“The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.”
Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 1. Why Are People?
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Richard Dawkins322
English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941Related quotes
“In other words, a record of our past is etched into our genes.”
Matt Ridley book Genome
Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 2 “Species” (p. 35)
Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) American physician, poet and educator
"The Tucson Zoo", p. 9
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)
Context: We are endowed with genes which code out our reaction to beavers and otters, maybe our reaction to each other as well. We are stamped with stereotyped, unalterable patterns of response, ready to be released. And the behavior released in us, by such confrontations, is, essentially, a surprised affection. It is compulsory behavior and we can avoid it only by straining with the full power of our conscious minds, making up conscious excuses all the way. Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends.
Bob Torres American podcaster
Source: Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights (2007), p. 2
Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)
Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher
Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 86
Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene
Preface to the first edition
Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989)
Richard D. Ryder (1940) British psychologist
" Speciesism https://books.google.it/books?id=Rz30CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT59" (1970). Reported in Speciesism, Painism and Happiness: A Morality for the Twenty-First Century by Richard D. Ryder (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2011), Chapter 2.