Richard Dawkins · 336 pages
Rating: (6.8K votes)
“The facts are as follows. The total amount of DNA in different organisms is very variable, and the variation does not make obvious sense in terms of phylogeny. This is the so-called ‘C-value paradox’. ‘It seems totally implausible that the number of radically different genes needed in a salamander is 20 times that found in a man’ (Orgel & Crick 1980). It is equally implausible that salamanders on the West side of North America should need many times more DNA than congeneric salamanders on the East side.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
“The whole purpose of our search for a ‘unit of selection’ is to discover a suitable actor to play the leading role in our metaphors of purpose.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
“Adoption and contraception, like reading, mathematics, and stress-induced illness, are products of an animal that is living in an environment radically different from the one in which its genes were naturally selected.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
“To the extent that active germ-line replicators benefit from the survival of the bodies in which they sit, we may expect to see adaptations that can be interpreted as for bodily survival. A large number of adaptations are of this type. To the extent that active germ-line replicators benefit from the survival of bodies other than those in which they sit, we may expect to see ‘altruism’, parental care, etc. To the extent that active germ-line replicators benefit from the survival of the group of individuals in which they sit, over and above the two effects just mentioned, we may expect to see adaptations for the preservation of the group.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
“Why are genetic determinants thought to be any more ineluctable, or blame-absolving, than ‘environmental’ ones?”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene
Richard Dawkins
Born place: in Nairobi, Kenya
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“Whatever you've heard about Caraval, it doesn't compare to the reality. It's more than just a game or performance. It's the closest you'll ever find yourself magic in this world.”
― Stephanie Garber, quote from Caraval
“There are images that stay vividly in your mind, even after many years: images coupled with the feeling that at the same time came to you. Sometimes you can know that such an image has been selected to stay with you forever out of the hundreds you every day encounter.”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“For without knowing the white man at close hand, without having submitted to his wanton and arrogant kindnesses, without having smelled the smell of his bedsheets and his dirty underdrawers and the inside of his privy, and felt the casual yet insolent touch of his women’s fingers upon his own black arm, without seeing him at sport and at ease and at his hypocrite’s worship and at his drunken vileness and at his lustful and adulterous couplings in the hayfield—without having known all these cozy and familial truths, I say, a Negro can only pretend hatred.”
― William Styron, quote from The Confessions of Nat Turner
“• Eating disorders are addictions. You become addicted to a number of their effects. The two most basic and important: the pure adrenaline that kicks in when you're starving—you're high as a kite, sleepless, full of a frenetic, unstable energy—and the heightened intensity of experience that eating disorders initially induce. At first, everything tastes and smells intense, tactile experience is intense, your own drive and energy themselves are intense and focused. Your sense of power is very, very intense. You are not aware, however, that you are quickly becoming addicted.”
― Marya Hornbacher, quote from Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
“Some people are desperate because they don't know how to ask for His grace.”
― Bree Despain, quote from The Dark Divine
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