“It is easy to think of DNA as the information by which a body makes another body like itself. It would be more correct to see a body as the vehicle used by DNA to make more DNA like itself.”

— Richard Dawkins , book Climbing Mount Improbable

Source: Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Chapter 3, “The Message from the Mountain” (pp. 89-90)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 7, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is easy to think of DNA as the information by which a body makes another body like itself. It would be more correct …" by Richard Dawkins?

Richard Dawkins photo

Richard Dawkins 322

English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941

Related quotes

“The doctors said they've never seen a body kill the Coronavirus like my body. They tested my DNA and it wasn't DNA. It was USA.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Reportedly said by Trump after he was hospitalized with COVID-19, following an outbreak of the disease in the White House; the quote actually originates from an image featuring a fabricated subtitle overlaid on a video released by the President while he was in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-kill-body/
Misattributed

“… the true utility function of life, that which is being maximised in the natural world, is DNA survival. But DNA is not floating free; it is locked up in living bodies and it has made the most of the levers of power at its disposal.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

River out of Eden (1995)

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”

Bill Gates book The Road Ahead

Source: The Road Ahead

“Ve haf vays of making you gif us your DNA sample.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

“I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

“You’re so hypnotizing,
Could you be the devil, could you be an angel?
Your touch magnetizing,
Feels like going floating, leaves my body glowing.
They say be afraid,
You’re not like the others, futuristic lovers.
Different DNA, they don’t understand you.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

E.T., written by Katy Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, Joshua Coleman, and Kanye West
Song lyrics, Teenage Dream (2010)

“I can see no practical application of molecular biology to human affairs… DNA is a tangled mass of linear molecules in which the informational content is quite inaccessible.”

Frank Macfarlane Burnet (1899–1985) Australian virologist

Burnet, F.M. (1970) Immunological Surveillance. Pergamon Press. pp. 240-241.

“It is a very helpful insight to say we are vehicles for our DNA, we are hosts for DNA parasites which are our genes. Those are insights which help us to understand an aspect of life. But it's emotive to say, that's all there is to it, we might as well give up going to Shakespeare plays and give up listening to music and things, because that's got nothing to do with it. That's an entirely different subject.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

An Interview by Sheena McDonald (1995)

“And it is the body's hysterical overreaction to a virus, rather than the virus itself, that makes us ill.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

“With the appearance of the human, the coding process of life burst beyond the DNA molecule and began carving its information in stone!”

Brian Swimme (1950) American cosmologist

From Journey of the Universe:

Related topics