William Landay Quotes

Genes are not destiny!

Well, it arose out of two long-term concerns - the first being the possibility of genetic manipulation, nature versus nurture, what constitutes how people get to be how they are.

So no, it's not all in the genes, but what isn't in the genes isn't in the family environment either. It can't be explained in terms of the overall personalities or the child-rearing practices of parents.

Genes can't possibly explain all of what makes us what we are.

I align myself with almost all researchers in assuming that anything we do is a composite of whatever genetic limitations were given to us by our parents and whatever kinds of environmental opportunities are available.

Man is the control experiment of heredity and environment; and since his heredity controls him, he tries to control his environment.

Freedom was conditioned by man's physical body, heredity, and environment.

Your genetics load the gun. Your lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Character, I am sure, lies in the genes.

I don't believe environment has the slightest bit to do with anything - I only believe in ancestral influence. It would have made no difference whether I'd been brought up in a reform school, or on the island of Lesbos.

There's a constant debate over nature or nurture - they're inseparable.

If you talk to geneticists they are constantly finding that your genes are being switched on and off because of the environment. Genes alone do not determine an exact path in your life.

That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The 'situation' is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training.

Genetics play a huge part in who we are. But we also have free will.

There is no escaping from the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture.

You can improve your education and even change your environment but what you really ARE was all settled when your parents www born. SELECTED PARENTS WILL HAVE BETTER CHILDREN.

One of the things that got me interested in genetics was the relationship between genes and environment. We are all dealt a certain deck of cards, but our environment can influence the outcomes.

Your genetics is not your destiny.

If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation.

It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all.

Heredity proposes and development disposes.

Genetically influenced behavior is not necessarily good and not necessarily unchangeable. Explanations of bad behavior that appeal to genes do not absolve a person any more than do explanations that appeal to upbringing.

When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the "selfish gene" thesis doesn't explain everything.

If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable? … We are born that way. We don’t choose it. So shouldn’t it be acceptable, excuse - this is according to the way the left thinks about things.