Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that humans have an inherent selfish nature, and thus we should actively teach values like generosity and altruism.
Richard Dawkins' quote highlights the idea that humans are born with innate selfish tendencies due to evolutionary biology. In contrast, he advocates for the active teaching of generosity and altruism as essential counterbalances to our natural inclinations, suggesting that these values can be learned and cultivated, leading to more harmonious social interactions and a better society.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of community service.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts.
A man may stand for the justice of God, but a woman stands for His Mercy.
People have a hard time accepting anything that overwhelms them.
We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.....We must not.....assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it.
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