A Quote by Steven Pinker

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.

Steven Pinker

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Blue Blueprints Brain Build Buildings Gene Genes Interior Just Monologue Most Necessarily Organisms Play Players See Selfish Selfish Gene Selfless Shall Sometimes Thing Within

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Steven Pinker
Canadian - Scientist
Born: September 18, 1954

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.

Richard Dawkins

Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.

Steven Pinker

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

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.

Richard Dawkins

Complex organisms cannot be construed as the sum of their genes, nor do genes alone build particular items of anatomy or behavior by themselves. Most genes influence several aspects of anatomy and behavior as they operate through complex interactions with other genes and their products, and with environmental factors both within and outside the developing organism. We fall into a deep error, not just a harmful oversimplification, when we speak of genes "for" particular items of anatomy or behavior.

Stephen Jay Gould

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.

Charles Jencks

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

Richard Dawkins

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.

Richard Dawkins

A lot of times, people think of selfish, and they think of offense, but you can be selfish on the defensive end of the floor, too. If you don't uphold your end of our schemes and your responsibilities within those schemes, then you're being just as selfish.

J. B. Bickerstaff

Great leaders have to know when to divide that line from being selfless to being selfish, and he perfectly chose the time to be selfish and made plays.

Michael Irvin

We found evolution will punish you if you're selfish and mean. For a short time and against a specific set of opponents, some selfish organisms may come out ahead. But selfishness isn't evolutionarily sustainable.

Chris Adami

Selfish genes actually explain altruistic individuals, and to me that's crystal-clear.

Richard Dawkins

In my team, I don't want selfish players. I prefer to lose a game than have selfish players. I don't want that in my club. Never.

Antonio Conte

In some cases there are ways of thinking about what an architectural program produces - interior and exterior - that is not necessarily directed by an economic requirement, but is a diagram based on human actions, selfish or otherwise.

Jimenez Lai

I know that actors and actresses have a great reputation for being very, very selfish, and in some cases, that's very true. But in the theater I find it doesn't help you to be selfish. You sort of have to be selfless in the theater, and the more selfless you are - that doesn't mean don't take care of yourself - but the more you sort of surrender to the work, I find, the better the work is. That's just my experience.

Laura Linney

Sometimes you have to be selfish to be selfless.

Edward Albert

A Quote by Steven Pinker

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