Quotes About Memes

A good joke can spread throughout the Internet between the time you go to bed and the time you wake up, leading to an inbox filled with pictures of funny cats and cheeseburgers.

The principles that explain why some genes are transmitted more successfully than others also explain why some beliefs are transmitted more successfully than others.

For memes, I have an entire iPhone folder of photos that I've taken or saved because I find something about them hilarious.

The claim that memes are units because they "replicate themselves with reliability and fecundity" 41 manages to be circular, empty and daft all at once: quite an achievement.

Many myths and religions have some kind of threat of retribution from their god or gods, and their doctrines warn of the dangers of doing various forbidden things. Why? Because memes involving danger are the ones we pay attention to! As oral traditions developed, our brains were set up to amplify the dangers and give them greater significance than the rest.

How about this one: you are simply a distinction—a meme—invented because it was convenient to talk about the parts of the universe that feel pain when hit with a hammer. To the universe, there's no you . . . or human beings or giraffes or solar systems or galaxies. All those are human-invented distinctions. They are all memes.

Dan Quayle, mutating the memes in the United Negro College Fund's motto, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." There is some good news in this book. So before I get into how mind viruses are spreading wildly throughout the world—infecting people with unwanted programming like the Michelangelo computer virus infects computers with self-destruct instructions—I'll start with the good news. . . .

We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. . . . We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.* 12

We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

The computers in which memes live are human brains.

They are the outward and visible (audible, etc.) manifestations of the memes within the brain.

It is, of course, true that 'Memes are utterly dependent upon genes, but genes can exist and change quite independently of memes' (Bonner 1980). But this does not mean that the ultimate criterion for success in meme selection is gene survival.

Whatever the claims of memes to be regarded as replicators in the same sense as genes, the first part of this chapter established that individual organisms are not replicators.

If the organism is not a replicator, what is it? The answer is that it is a communal vehicle for replicators. A vehicle is an entity in which replicators (genes and memes) travel about, an entity whose attributes are affected by the replicators inside it, an entity which may be seen as a compound tool of replicator propagation.

When people get immersed in a culture with strong new memes, it tends to be a sink-or-swim proposition. Either you change your mind, succumbing to peer pressure and adopting the new memes as your own, or you struggle with the extremely uncomfortable feeling of being surrounded by people who think you're crazy or inadequate. The fact that you probably think the same about them is little consolation.

All naturally evolved religions--cultural viruses--are bundles of memes.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Successful cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and benefits to their human hosts.

Memes don't move: Signal-instigators do. This means the idea of a meme may be a meme, but the spoken word 'meme' is not itself a meme; it is a signal. A meme can only be a state of matter coded in 'brain language.

Only two things are infinite,the universe and memes,and i am not sure about the former.

The Internet now is completely full of memes, and it's interesting, the idea that instead of having a sign crotched on your door or a magnet on your fridge saying whatever cliches and bon mots, pictures laid out with some text are passed around and move really fast.

I have only become more popular since 'Race 3' memes.