A Quote by Jane Goodall

Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything. — © Jane Goodall
Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything.
We are programmed; we are literally programmed genetically and then we are programmed environmentally and most people never break out of that programming.
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.
I've always been antagonistic to any naïve application of the selfish gene theory to politics. Some people have attempted to suggest that it means we are selfish or we should be selfish.
Some people are genetically programmed to be difficult.
People who criticize The Selfish Gene like that often haven't read it. The selfish gene accounts for altruism toward kin and individuals who might be in a position to reciprocate your altruism.
I think that genetically we're programmed to battle each other.
Plainly, children learn their language. I don't speak Swahili. And it cannot be that my language is 'an innate property of our brain.' Otherwise I would have been genetically programmed to speak (some variety of) English.
Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.
Some, like Mother Teresa, are born with a gene to help the poor, and some are born with a gene to write. I was born with a gene to tell my story, and I just had to.
The first thing I'd say to women is put aside the guilt. I think we're all genetically programmed to feel guilty for not giving total effort at the job.
What you cannot have is a gene that sacrifices itself for the benefit of other genes. What you can have is a gene that makes organisms sacrifice themselves for other organisms under the influence of selfish genes.
One of the goals of philosophy is wage theoretical battle. That is why we can say that every thesis is always, by its very nature, an antithesis. A thesis is only ever put forward in opposition to another thesis, or in defence of a new one.
The battle rages eternal, though the race, religion, gender or sexual orientation of those discriminated against changes regularly. Maybe man’s need for a scapegoat is genetically programmed into him.
It [also] lives on its history, now, to some extent: its achievements [ of the Commonwealth] in Rhodesia and South Africa, which were enormous. And they'll live on that for some time, I guess. And there is still - I'm out of touch with it now, of course - but I still think there is a degree of cooperation at the economic level, to some extent, with the more developed countries helping the less developed. How substantial that is now, I simply am not versed.
We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. 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.
When we talk about genes for anything, like a gene for being gay or a gene for being aggressive or something of that sort, that a gene for anything may not have been a gene for that thing under different environmental conditions.
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