DavidV

‘In evolutionary theory, a gene could be defined as any hereditary information for which there is a favorable or unfavorable selection bias equal to several or many times its rate of endogenous change.’ - Williams (1966, p. 25) In other words, a gene is a DNA fragment which replicates at least several times before it is changed by chromosomal recombination (meosis). By contract, a chromosone is not a gene because it (normally) changes during every instance of meosis. A single nucleotid...

"... as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else. At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he bro...

"... religions teach the slave virtues. They make inanimate things holy, and falsehoods sacred. They create artificial crimes. To eat meat on Friday, to enjoy yourself on Sunday, to eat on fast-days, to be happy in Lent, to dispute a priest, to ask for evidence, to deny a creed, to express your sincere thought, all these acts are sins, crimes against some god, To give your honest opinion about Jehovah, Mohammed or Christ, is far worse than to maliciously slander your neighbor. To question or...

"... what is beneficial to one entity in the hierarchy of life is harmful to another, and creationism gives us no grounds for supposing that one entity’s welfare will be preferred to another’s. In passing, the fundamentalist student might pause to wonder at a God who goes ·to great trouble to provide predators with beautiful adaptations to catch prey, while with the other hand giving prey beautiful adaptations to thwart them. Perhaps He enjoys the spectator sport. " - from The Extended Pheno...

"..the sanction of experienced fact has changed and shaped all the concepts of men who have felt the Scientific Revolution. A civilization cannot hold its activities apart, or put on science like a suit of clothes - a workday suit which is not good enough for Sundays." -- J Bronowski

" followed a golden rule, whenever a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones." - Charles Darwin

"A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points." - Alan Kay

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck The older I get, the more true and universally applicable this statement becomes.

"Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error." - Ayn Rand

"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair — The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Work Without Hope" (1825)

"All pretensions to theological knowledge should now be seen from the perspective of a man who was just beginning his day on the one hundredth floor of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001." [The perpetrators] were certainly no 'cowards,' as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith-perfect faith, as it turns out-and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be."- Sam Harris

"An idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all its details and in experimental situations, may in fact not be paradoxical." – Richard Feynman

"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" -Patrick Henry

"As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion will break through an unreflecting mind." -- Gautama Buddha, from the Dhammapada

"As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state." - Adam Smith

"Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one." — Richard Dawkins

"Can you prove that Apple is thriving because it takes much better care of its existing customers than do any of its competitors? I guess not. But it’s the difference between a company that simply wants to sell you a device, and a company that wants to sell you a device and make you happy that you bought it. Making a sale versus fostering a relationship between customer and the company."

"Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading." -Richard Dawkins

"Comment reconnaître la [spoliation légale]? C'est bien simple. Il faut examiner si la Loi prend aux uns ce qui leur appartient pour donner aux autres ce qui ne leur appartient pas. Il faut examiner si la Loi accomplit, au profit d'un citoyen et au détriment des autres, un acte que ce citoyen ne pourrait accomplir lui-même sans crime. Hâtez-vous d'abroger cette Loi; elle n'est pas seulement une iniquité, elle est une source féconde d'iniquités; car elle appelle les représailles, et si vous n'...

"Don't like gay marriages? Don't get one.. Don't like cigarettes? Don't smoke them.. Don't like abortions? Don't get one.. Don't like sex? Don't have it.. Don't like drugs? Don't do them.. Don't like porn? Don't watch it.. Don't like alcohol? Don't drink it.. Don't like guns? Don't buy one.. Don't like your rights taken away??? Don't take away someone else's. - Peter Namtvedt

"Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate." - Sun Tzu

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." - H.L. Mencken.

"Evolution is the external and visible manifestation of the differential survival of alternative replicators. Genes are replicators; organisms and groups of organisms are best not regarded as replicators; they are vehicles in which replicators travel about. Replicator selection is the process by which some replicators survive at the expense of other replicators. Vehicle selection is the process by which some vehicles are more successful than other vehicles in ensuring the survival of their re...