Quotes About Genes

Chicken fat, beef fat, fish fat, fried foods - these are the foods that fuel our fat genes by giving them raw materials for building body fat.

Goodness provokes bitchiness. It's mathematical. It's somewhere in the human genes. Any number of lovely people are married to horrible ones.

Genes do amazing things inside our bodies, but even more amazing to me is what they do outside of them. Genes affect not only the structure and function of our bodies; not only the structure and function of our minds and, hence, our behaviors; but also the structure and function of our societies.

The genes of this cryptic organism may flag it as a methane-generating anaerobe, but the cells could be ticking over, rather than farting with gay abandon, and contributing little to the chemical balance of the soil. At the time of sampling, it might have been waiting for a dip in oxygen levels that would permit its return to normal flatulent programming.

One of these scientists even showed that thinking, learning, and acting can turn our genes on or off,

Psychotherapy works by going deep into the brain and its neurons and changing their structure by turning on the right genes. Psychiatrist Dr. Susan Vaughan has argued that the talking cure works by 'talking to neurons,' and that an effective psychotherapist or psychoanalyst is a 'microsurgeon of the mind' who helps patients make needed alterations in neuronal networks.

One of these scientists even showed that thinking, learning, and acting can turn our genes on or off, thus shaping our brain anatomy and our behavior—surely one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century. In

A cancer growing in someone's body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.

Human purpose isn't what you say it is or what I say it is. It's what your biology says it is--what your genes say it is.

Yes," he said, "intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But your denial doesn't matter. A cancer growing in someone's body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.

There was not a single smoker in Europe before the sixteenth century, because until then there was no tobacco there. Very few women smoked until the twentieth century; now the habit is more popular among young women than among young men. To say that individual differences in smoking are half caused by genes is simply not true. It all depends on the environment in which the individual is living.

That genes explain our behaviour and well-being distracts attention from society as a cause; such ideas also encourage us to accept or pursue chemical, physical solutions, not social change.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

Natural selection may be selfish (in a metaphorical sense), but if so, it's selfish about genes, not individuals. The story goes that J. B. S. Haldane was asked if he would give his life to save his brother and he said he wouldn't, but he would happily do so for two brothers or eight cousins. Only a biologist would say something like that, but Haldane was nicely expressing how evolution works.

You don't need special traits, special genes, or special motivation to write a lot. You don't need to want to write--people rarely feel like doing unpleasant tasks that lack deadlines--so don't wait until you feel like it. Productive writing comes from harnessing the power of habit, and habits come from repetition p.129

And the adoption? How does that work with this theory about families?" "I see it this way. Your biological parents give you their genes, the map of your physical self. But whoever raises you makes you who you are, for better or for worse. Family dynamics are acted out, not built in, though someday scientists might prove otherwise.

Don't ask what causes my problems, don't probe my memories or thoughts or feelings; there is nothing to know, the answer lies in my genes. There was no room for human mystery! This inability to envision psychological and psychosocial causation is both at the root of the psychological problems these individuals brought into the consulting-room and at the core of the naive nativist perspective.

Perhaps more relevant to us from an attachment standpoint are the classic studies of rat pups separated from their mother in the first two weeks of life, who appear to incur a permanent increase in the expression of genes controlling the secretion of CRF (corticotrophin-releasing factor)

it is entirely illogical to consider biology in dichotomous terms of genes and environment—all of biology is based on the continuous interaction of both.

We're not very good as a species at looking into the future. It's much easier to look back at the past. We can edit out the bits we don't like, reinvent ourselves. But there's nothing about the future we can edit or reinvent. Most people are prisoners of the future just as much as they are prisoners of their genes.