Craig Venter Quotes

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.

In genetic epistemology, as in developmental psychology, too, there is never an absolute beginning.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Heredity proposes and development disposes.

It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.

Good heredity and environment are necessary. You cannot compare the child of a savage with the child of a civilized person.

They say your genetics are going to set your direction regardless of what happens, but I think there's more to it than that.

Genes are not destiny!

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

Character, I am sure, lies in the genes.

I am obsessed with why people turn out the way they are.

I think the shape of our bodies has as much to do with the shape of our parents as it does with training.

Genes are not simple triggers. No one is hardwired to commit murder or any other crime. Our actions are always the result of stupendously complex gene-environment interactions, and environment is likely to remain the more important influence by far.

I don't know if acting is genetic. Maybe it's environmental.

Genetics do play a role in how you consciously or subconsciously manifest your true self.

Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate.

Identical twins are ideal lab specimens for studying the difference between learned and inherited traits since they come from the womb preloaded with matching genetic operating systems. Any meaningful differences in their behaviors or personalities are thus likely to have been acquired, not innate.

One of the most important aspects of what makes us who we are is neither straight genes or straight environment but actually what happens to us during development.

The more that I looked at DNA, the more I realized it was nature and nurture. It's how genes and your environment work together to produce the person you are.

Improvement in social conditions will not compensate for a bad hereditary influence.