David Attenborough Quotes

I think that genetically we're programmed to battle each other.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can't be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

I think almost everything about humans and human civilization is explained better by evolution than anything else.

There is indeed the possibility that the evolutionary process has, in gray antiquity, bred into us an excess of aggression.

Politics is applied biology.

Humans have continued to evolve quite a lot over the past ten thousand years, and certainly over 100 thousand. Sure, our biology affects our behavior. But it's unlikely that humans' early evolution is deeply relevant to contemporary psychological questions about dating or the willpower to complete a dissertation.

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

We adore babies because they're so cute. And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny. This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why.

There's a common criticism of evolutionary psychology that it's fatalistic and it dooms us to eternal strife, 'Why even try to work toward peace if we're just bloody killer apes and violence is in our genes?'

Somewhere between the intellectual idea of why we're attracted to certain things and the pragmatic reality is some form of ever-evolving truth.

Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

Evolution is an indispensable component of any satisfying explanation of our psychology.

I can't think of anyone who is up on evolutionary psychology and related areas who is deluded enough to be called a utopian.

It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.

The explanatory power of evolutionary psychology is limitless!

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

Evolution leads the way through desire.

Sympathy will have been increased through natural selection

We must realise that man's nature will remain the same so long as he remains man; that civilisation is but a slight coverlet beneath which the dominant beast sleeps lightly and ever ready to awake. To preserve civilisation, we must deal scientifically with the brute element, using only genuine biological principles.

Everything happens the way it's supposed to because it's just like cavemen - you evolve and grow and learn.

I think the default position of humans is to be terrible, and we have to train it out of our children. That's just part of survival, right? Predator animals don't survive by being nice; humans are basically predator animals.

I still see life entirely through its Darwinian prism. I keep trying to shake off the aftereffects of writing 'The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead', and I find I can't.

The rules of wildlife are simple and clear, which is not the case for men.

Our physiological constitution is obviously a product of Darwinian processes, insofar as you buy the evolutional theory as a generative, as an account of the mechanism that generated us. Our physiology evolved, our behaviors evolved, and our accounts of those behaviors, both successful and unsuccessful, evolved.

I think that maybe human beings are conditioned to violence.