Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

Our experience in fooling around with the genes of mice has taught us that many of the traits that interest us are not definite products of specific mutations but emergent phenomena arising from extremely complex interactions between genes, environment, and life experience.

If you talk to geneticists they are constantly finding that your genes are being switched on and off because of the environment. Genes alone do not determine an exact path in your life.

A person's health isn't generally a reflection of genes, but how their environment is influencing them. Genes are the direct cause of less than 1pc of diseases: 99pc is how we respond to the world.

Yes, genes are important for understanding our behavior. Incredibly important - after all, they code for every protein pertinent to brain function, endocrinology, etc., etc. But the regulation of genes is often more interesting than the genes themselves, and it's the environment that regulates genes.

There is no gene "for" such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. [...] Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channeled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn't even work directly on parts.

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

When we talk about genes for anything, like a gene for being gay or a gene for being aggressive or something of that sort, that a gene for anything may not have been a gene for that thing under different environmental conditions.

We have 26,000 genes. But a blind, millimetre-long roundworm with only 959 cells in total already has over 19,000.

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.

Epigenetics doesn't change the genetic code, it changes how that's read. Perfectly normal genes can result in cancer or death. Vice-versa, in the right environment, mutant genes won't be expressed. Genes are equivalent to blueprints; epigenetics is the contractor. They change the assembly, the structure.

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.

The genetics of autism are real, but there are also environmental triggers.

No one knows what the nongenetic causes of individuality are. Perhaps people are shaped by modifications of genes that take place after conception, or by haphazard fluctuations in the chemical soup in the womb or the wiring up of the brain or the expression of the genes themselves.

It's often meaningless to talk about a genetic trait without also discussing the environment in which that trait appears. Sometimes, genes don't work at all until the environment awakens them.

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.

The fallacy of genetic determinism is to suppose that the genes "make' the organism. It is a basic principle of developmental biology that organisms undergo a continuous development from conception to death, a development that is the unique consequence of the interaction of the genes in their cells, the temporal sequence of environments through which the organisms pass, and random cellular processes that determine the life, death, and transformation of cells. As a result, even the fingerprints of identical twins are not identical. Their temperaments, mental processes, abilities, life choices, disease histories, and death certainly differ despite the determined efforts of many parents to enforce as great a similarity as possible.

Your genes are not your fate... if you change your lifestyle, you change your genes.

One of the things that got me interested in genetics was the relationship between genes and environment. We are all dealt a certain deck of cards, but our environment can influence the outcomes.

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

Suppose that there's a gene that makes you gay if you were bottle-fed but that has some completely different effect if you were breast-fed. So in the days before bottles were invented that gene would not have manifested itself as gay behavior, but now that bottles are common it can do so.

Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait.

...cells are not controlled by genes and neither are we.

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.

Foolish heart, hear me calling. Stop before you start falling. Foolish heart, heed my warning; you've been wrong before. Don't be wrong anymore.