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Quotes by Scientist
"There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization."
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"The arms race between [predators] and [prey] is asymmetric, in which success on either side is felt as failure by the other side, but the nature of the success and failure on the two sides is very different. The two sides are 'trying' to do very different things. [Predators] are trying to eat [prey]. [Prey] are not trying to eat [predators], they are trying to avoid being eaten by [predators].From an evolutionary point of view asymmetric arms races are more [likely] to generate highly complex weapons systems."
22
"Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution."
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"Arguments from authority carry little weight " authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts."
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"Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need."
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"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."
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"I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine."
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"Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age."
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"Perhaps the most extraordinary popular delusion about violence of the past quarter-century is that it is caused by low self-esteem. That theory has been endorsed by dozens of prominent experts, has inspired school programs designed to get kids to feel better about themselves, and in the late 1980s led the California legislature to form a Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. Yet Baumeister has shown that the theory could not be more spectacularly, hilariously, achingly wrong. Violence is a problem not of too little self-esteem but of too much, particularly when it is unearned."
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"Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else."
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"The knowledge of the Universe is not secret, but is placed in the heart of every grandma and grandpa who have nothing and yet give everything to their grandchildren, in the eyes of every mother holding her baby close to her heart, in the spirit of every father holding the hand of his child walking for the first time."
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"Adapting to changes represents an important characteristic of human nature, essential for the development of human society."
21
"No, this customary aim of research by excavators is completely foreign to the historical work with which I am occupied... my sole and only aim is to be able to establish a historical fact, on which I disagree with some eminent historians and geographers."
21
"We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose."
21
"Empathize with others. You may easily get into a situation where you need the understanding of others."
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"Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use.The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world."
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"The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority."
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"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
21
"My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries."
21
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
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"Concerning mistakes, follow three simple rules. Firstly, correct a mistake that you made whenever it is possible. Secondly, don't repeat the same mistakes. Thirdly, learn from past mistakes."
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"Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person."
21
"There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - decoration of surfaces and bodies - appears to be a human universal."
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"The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'."
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"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."
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"There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal."
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"The man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only in the abstract, selecting in his consideration only a single side of our complex and many-sided being."
21
"Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science. It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best."
21
"The world won't be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."
21
"The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified."
21
"I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further."
21
"I would argue that a truly developed country would be beyond Presidents and Kings. In a world with some semblance of equality, each liberal-minded woman, each gay person, and indeed almost every person could be their own President. In a world of equals, what real service does a ruler provide?"
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