Steven Pinker Quotes

Even with seemingly simple things like eye color, you can't tell from my genetic code whether I have blue eyes or not. So it's naive to think that complex human behaviors, like risk-seeking, are driven by changes in one or two genes.

Genes are not destiny!

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.

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.

By then, I was making the slow transition from classical biochemistry to molecular biology and becoming increasingly preoccupied with how genes act and how proteins are made.

… the policy of genes

In any complex organism, brain formation and function must be controlled in part by genes.

Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.

The body is merely an evolutionary vehicle for the gene

Genes are little items that are found in every living thing except Sen. Alfonse D'Amato.

We can change the expression of more than 70 percent of the genes that have a direct bearing on our health and longevity.

Genes don't mean necessarily that you have got a certain strand of gene that makes you particularly acceptable as a public official.

Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.

Similarly, another famous little quantum fluctuation that programs you is the exact configuration of your DNA.

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

We know specific genes are turned on in specific cells, but we don't know to what extent this happens.

Nuclear DNA encodes all the proteins and enzymes that make you you, basically.

Every cell in your body contains the same genetic information.

The information encoded in your DNA determines your unique biological characteristics, such as sex, eye color, age and Social Security number.

The interaction of the variation in our genes is what's responsible for lots of our attributes and vigor.

People think genes are an absolute cause of traits. But the notion that the genome is the blueprint for humanity is a very bad metaphor. If you think we're hard-wired and deterministic, there should indeed be a lot more genes.

I became fascinated by the then-blossoming science of molecular biology when, in my senior year, I happened to read the papers by Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod on the operon theory.

It's a very complex network of genes making products which go into the nucleus and turn on other genes. And, in fact, you find a continuing network of processes going on in a very complex way by which genes are subject to these continual adjustments, as you might say - the computer programmer deciding which genes ultimately will work.

The identification of the genes which determine biological phenomena and the study of the control they exert on these phenomena has proven to be the most successful approach to a detailed understanding of the mechanism of biological processes.

There are many ways in which genes influence the brain.