Richard Dawkins Quotes about Survival

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We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

Richard Dawkins

Selfish, Science, Survival

1976 The Selfish Gene, ch.2.

Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.

Richard Dawkins

Hands, Forever, Survival

Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.56, Oxford University Press

The body is a survival machine programmed to propagate the genes that reside inside it.

Richard Dawkins

Survival, Machines, Body

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.

Richard Dawkins

Humanity, Survival, Entity

Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.423, Oxford University Press

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

Richard Dawkins

Religion, Survival, Culture

Richard Dawkins (1989). “The Selfish Gene”, p.193, Oxford University Press, USA

Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. The watchmaker is blind

Richard Dawkins

Survival, Evolution, Blind

In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically, those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to survive.

Richard Dawkins

Science, Survival, Quality

Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company

They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

Richard Dawkins

Names, Long, Survival

Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.41, Oxford University Press

I could easily believe that religion could enhance health and hence survival, and that therefore there could be indeed be literally Darwinian survival value, Darwinian selection in favor of religion. None of that of course bears at all upon the truth value of the claims made by religions.

Richard Dawkins

Believe, Survival, Favors

"Faith and Reason" Interview, www.pbs.org.