Richard Dawkins Selfish Gene Quotes

#1. 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

#2. You cannot give what you don't have; you must be truly saved to preach the gospel.

Felix Wantang

#3. The gene is the basic unit of selfishness.

Richard Dawkins

#4. Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene is a classic example of science fiction.

Pope Benedict XVI

#5. It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.

Brendan Behan

#6. He had to keep thinking of them because if he forgot them and did not think of them they might forget about him. And he had to keep hoping.

Gary Paulsen

#7. 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.* 12

Richard Dawkins

#8. The fact is it happened. It's over now. I do not live my life constantly wishing that I could change the past.

Jaycee Dugard

#9. I have always loved blizzards, if only because of the driving experience - which is definitely an acquired taste.

Hunter S. Thompson

#10. Relatives share a substantial proportion of their genes. Each selfish gene therefore has its loyalties divided between different bodies.

Richard Dawkins

#11. I don't actually think 'The Selfish Gene' is a very good title. I think that's one of my worst titles.

Richard Dawkins

#12. I think it is a simple statement of principle that in a democracy you should make your MPs work harder for your vote and try and get at least majority support in their local area, and that in a nutshell is what AV does.

Nick Clegg

#13. 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

#14. I would never say, "I'm retired." I believe if I decided to just not work, in six months everybody would just forget whether you were working or not.

Jack Nicholson

#15. It requires a deliberate mental effort to turn biology the right way up again, and remind ourselves that the replicators come first, in importance as well as in history.

Richard Dawkins

#16. In order to become prosperous, a person must initially work very hard, so he or she has to sacrifice a lot of leisure time.

Dalai Lama

#17. In the words of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, "Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds.

Alena Graedon

#18. The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

Alexander Pope

#19. The Swiss are well armed and very free.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#20. The multiverse was his TGI Friday's.

Lev Grossman

#21. Age is a question of mind over matter. If you do not mind, it does not matter.

Preeti Shenoy

#22. I don't think he should make foreign policy on the basis of peak,but I don't think it can be overstated that Israel has been an embattled democracy that has enjoyed the bipartisan and overwhelming support of Americans. It has been a moral force.

Mark Shields

#23. No doubt this works well enough for The Tale of Benjamin Bunny or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I can readily see that 'The Selfish Gene' on its own, without the large footnote of the book itself, might give an inadequate impression of its contents.

Richard Dawkins