A Quote by Richard Dawkins

We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Richard Dawkins

Quote Topics

Against Alone Earth Rebel Selfish Tyranny

Quote Author

Richard Dawkins
English - Scientist
Born: March 26, 1941

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.

Richard Dawkins

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.

Richard Dawkins

The replicators that exist tend to be the ones that are good at manipulating the world to their own advantage. But other replicators are also successful otherwise they would not be common. The world therefore tends to become populated by mutually compatible sets of successful replicators, replicators that get on well together

Richard Dawkins

He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third.

Thomas Paine

Rebel, rebel, you've torn your dress. Rebel, rebel, your face is a mess. Rebel, rebel, how could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so.

David Bowie

I really wasn't very much of a rebel. I'm seen by people now as more of a rebel which is strange. I don't like doing what people tell me to do. I don't deliberately rebel against them.

Robert Pattinson

You don't have to burn books, you don't have to rebel against teachers to rebel; to rebel is to truly own your own self.

Dhani Harrison

Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.

John Stuart Mill

My rebellion was telling my dad, "No, you're wrong, you don't know what's best for me. I'm not gonna waste my time in college." You know the story. He thought he was an abject failure 'cause he didn't convince me to go to college. I didn't rebel against my dad's economic status. I didn't rebel against what I thought were old-fashioned, archaic moral values. I didn't rebel by going out and wrecking the car and getting drunk and being irresponsible. I rebelled against their assumption they knew better than I did, what I wanted, and what I needed.

Rush Limbaugh

To rail and rant against tyranny is to manifest inferiority, for there is no tyranny but ignorance; to be conscious of one's powers is to lose consciousness of tyranny. Self government is not a remote aim. It is an intimate and inescapable fact. To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it.

E.C. Riegel

One of the greatest rebels, who I really admire: Christ. He was a rebel. He ended up being crucified. He was a great rebel. He rebelled against the established power that subjugated.

Hugo Chavez

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.

Mikhail Bakunin

I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

James Joyce

An adolescent does not rebel against her parents. She rebels against their power. If parents would rely less on power and more on nonpower methods to influence their children from infancy on, there would be little for children to rebel against when they become adolescents. The use of power to change the behavior of children, then, has this severe limitation: parents inevitably run out of power, and sooner than they think.

Thomas Gordon

A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing. That's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war.