A Quote by W. D. Hamilton

Man is not an organism; he is an intelligence served by organs.

W. D. Hamilton

Quote Topics

Intelligence Man Organism Organs Served

Quote Author

W. D. Hamilton
August 1, 1936 - March 7, 2000

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For man also, in health and sickness, is not just the sum of his organs, but is indeed a human organism.

Walter Rudolf Hess

Man is a mind betrayed, not served, by his organs.

Edmond de Goncourt

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Aldous Huxley

Man as seen as an organism or man as seen as a person discloses different aspects of the human reality to the investigator. Both are quite possible methodologically but one must be alert to the possible occasion for confusion. (...) Seen as an organism, man cannot be anything else but a complex of things, of its, and the processes that ultimately comprise an organism are it-processes.

R. D. Laing

Man is not a machine, ... although man most certainly processes information, he does not necessarily process it in the way computers do. Computers and men are not species of the same genus. .... No other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms. ... However much intelligence computers may attain, now or in the future, theirs must always be an intelligence alien to genuine human problems and concerns.

Joseph Weizenbaum

Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it's the job of intelligence to adjust.

Michael Hayden

The individual organs follow the same pattern as the whole organism, i.e. they have their period of growth, of stationary, maximum activity and then of aging decline.

Wilhelm Ostwald

Yes, America's vast foreign service and intelligence organs may disagree with that assessment. And some of Israel's most senior intelligence figures regard Iran as dangerous, but rational. But in Netanyahu's view, diplomacy has had its moment.

Neil Macdonald

When, as today, there is a market in human organs, when fetuses are produced to make spare organs available, or to make progress in research and preventive medicine, many regard the human content of these practices as implicit. But the contempt for man that underlies it, when man is used and abused, leads -- like it or not -- to a descent into hell.

Pope Benedict XVI

There are three types of intelligence. The intelligence of man, the intelligence of animals and the intelligence of the military. In that order.

Gottfried Reinhardt

My feeling is that a human being or any complex organism has a system of cognitive structures that develop much in the way the physical organs of the body develop. That is, in their fundamental character they are innate; their basic form is determined by the genetic structure of the organism. Of course, they grow under particular environmental conditions, assuming a specific form that admits of some variation. Much of what is distinctive among human beings is a specific manner in which a variety of shared cognitive structures develop.

Noam Chomsky

Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times.

Sigmund Freud

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn ran the defense intelligence agency from 2012 to 2014. He served as a top national intelligence adviser to General Stanley McChrystal in Iraq.

Lawrence O'Donnell

Ere long intelligence-transmitted without wires-will throb through the earth like a pulse through a living organism. The wonder is that, with the present state of knowledge and the experiences gained, no attempt is being made to disturb the electrostatic or magnetic condition of the earth, and transmit, if nothing else, intelligence.