Daniel Dennett Quotes

As human beings, we are the genetic elite, the sentient, contemplating and innovating sum of countless genetic accidents and transcription errors.

I don't think there was a thunderclap or a divine spark that suddenly made one species smart. You can see, in our ancestors, there was a gradual expansion of the brain; there was an expansion of the complexity of tools.

Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow.

Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.

… the action of natural selection upon Man has ... been essentially diminished through the operation of social conditions

We should not live by Darwinian principles. But Darwin explains how we got here.

Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science - in all of biology.

To many people, 'biodiversity' is almost synonymous with the word 'nature,' and 'nature' brings to mind steamy forests and the big creatures that dwell there. Fair enough. But biodiversity is much more than that, for it encompasses not only the diversity of species, but also the diversity within species.

Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a creature that can fly to the moon and invent the Internet and cross the ocean in boats?

The perfect example of Darwinism is what technology has done to businesses.

It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.

If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.

In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival.

Evolution is among the most well-established theories in the scientific community. To doubt it sounds to biologists as absurd as denying relativity does to physicists.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

Evolution is one of the two or three most primally fascinating subjects in all the sciences.

Evolution isn't just a take-it-or-leave-it story about where we came from. It's an epic at the centre of life itself. It tells us we are part of nature in every respect.

Whatever the life form, evolution selects for economy of resources.

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.

Culture is how biology responds and makes its living conditions better.

If you really want to study evolution, you've got go outside sometime, because you'll see symbiosis everywhere!

Certain gorillas are more evolved than certain human beings I know.

That the variability of an organism to a certain extent is a constant and certain condition of life we admit, otherwise there would be no distinguishable individuals of a species.

There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success.