Nature Versus Nurture Quotes

When the hoary old question of nature versus nurture comes around, sides form quickly. ~ Simon Blackburn

Shouldn't an important part of discovering yourself be discovering what you family was like? Whichever side you favor in the nature versus nurture argument, who your parents are certainly helped shape who you are. ~ Quinn Cummings

We were prime examples of the age old debate: nature versus nurture. I'd been brought up around muscle cars and crescent wrenches, and he'd been surrounded by neon lights and stilettos. In all likelihood, I should've been straight as an arrow, and Frank would've ended up as a showgirl. Yet, he was the top, if only in bed. We both knew who wore the pants in the relationship, even though they were big on me because they were his. ~ Nicole Castle

The point to remember is that the issue is not nature versus nurture. It is the balance between nature and nurture. Genes do not make a man gay, or violent, or fat, or a leader. Genes merely make proteins. The chemical effect of these proteins may make the man's brain and body more receptive to certain environmental influences. But the extent of those influences will have as much to do with the outcome as the genes themselves. Furthermore, we humans are not prisoners of our genes or our environment. We have free will. Genes are overruled every time an angry man restrains his temper, a fat man diets, and an alocholic refuses to take a drink. On the other hand, the environment is overruled every time a genetic effect wins out, as when Lou Gehrig's athletic ability was overruled by his ALS. Genes and the environment work together to shape our brains, and we can manage them both if we want to. It may be harder for people with certain genes or surroundings, but "harder" is a long way from pedetermination. ~ John J. Ratey

Silent evidence pervades everything connected to the notion of history. By history, I don't mean just those learned-but-dull books in the history section (with Renaissance paintings on their cover to attract buyers). History, I will repeat, is any succession of events seen with the effect of posteriority.
This bias extends to the ascription of factors in the success of ideas and religions, to the illusion of skill in many professions, to success in artistic occupations, to the nature versus nurture debate, to mistakes in using evidence in the court of law, to illusions about the "logic" of history
and of course, most severely, in our perception of the nature of extreme events. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Well, it arose out of two long-term concerns - the first being the possibility of genetic manipulation, nature versus nurture, what constitutes how people get to be how they are. ~ Katherine Dunn

The propositions that accompany most of the chapters . . . are not as snappy as I would prefer - but there's a reason for their caution and caveats. On certain important points, the clamor of genuine scientific dispute has abated and we don't have to argue about them anymore. But to meet that claim requires me to state the propositions precisely. I am prepared to defend all of them as "things we don't have to argue about anymore" - but exactly as I worded them, not as others may paraphrase them.

Here they are:

1. Sex differences in personality are consistent worldwide and tend to widen in more gender-egalitarian cultures.

2. On average, females worldwide have advantages in verbal ability and social cognition while males have advantages in visuospatial abilities and the extremes of mathematical ability.

3. On average, women worldwide are more attracted to vocations centered on people and men to vocations centered on things.

4. Many sex differences in the brain are coordinate with sex differences in personality, abilities, and social behavior.

5. Human populations are genetically distinctive in ways that correspond to self-identified race and ethnicity.

6. Evolutionary selection pressure since humans left Africa has been extensive and mostly local.

7. Continental population differences in variants associated with personality, abilities, and social behavior are common.

8. The share ~ Charles Murray

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recalls that the stories she wrote as a seven year old in Nigeria were based on the kinds of stories she read, featuring characters who were white and blue eyed, they played in the snow, the ate apples. According to Adichie, this wasn´t just about experimentation or an active imagination, because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.
We learn so many things from reading stories, including the conventions of stories such as good versus evil, confronting our fears and that danger often lurks in the woods. The problem is that, when one of these conventions is that children in stories are white, english and middle class, than you may come to learn that your own life does not qualify as subject material.
Adichie describes this as "The danger of a single story" a danger that extends to stories which, whilst appearing to be diverse, rely on stereotypes and thus limit the imagination ~ Darren Chetty

How deaf and stupid I have been, he thought, walking on quickly. When anyone reads anything which he wishes to study, he does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance and worthless shells, but he reads them, he studies and loves them, letter by letter. But I, who wished to read the book of the world and of my own nature, did presume to despise the letters and signs. I called the world of appearances, illusion. I called my eyes and tongue, chance. Now it is over; I have awakened. ~ Hermann Hesse

Danny's trading life was man versus man, but this felt more like man versus nature: The synthetic CDO had become a synthetic natural disaster. ~ Michael Lewis

Your moral feelings are attached to frames, to descriptions of reality rather than to reality itself. The message about the nature of framing is stark: framing should not be viewed as an intervention that masks or distorts an underlying preference. At least in this instance - and also in the problems of the Asian disease and of surgery versus radiation for lung cancer - there is no underlying preference that is masked or distorted by the frame. Our preferences are about framed problems, and our moral intuitions are about descriptions, not about substance. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Love. Passion. Belief. Duty. The lines blur sometomes. There are ove fifteen recognised mjor religions on this planet. One religion believes something different from another, and yet so often it's just the same thing with a different name, or a different form of worship, or a different headdress. But they will fight to protect what they believe in, no matter the cost. You've been here a while Jack. How many wars, how many lives squandered on religion. Then we get to science. Science versus creationism for instance. Two opposing stances on the same subject, neither of which has evidence to back it up ~ Gary Russell

The left-hand path adept seeks to liberate him/herself from passive subjection to the illusory nature of Maya, thus freeing the consciousness from the binds of self-created delusion. ~ Zeena Schreck

In school, you learn that there are only seven kinds of stories. There's man versus nature, man versus man, man versus himself, blah blah blah. So it doesn't matter what they're called. It's this: do you have a new story that fits into one of those things. ~ Roberto Orci

Octopuses are tough
and not just in the sense that they can take out sharks (both real and computer generated, as in Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus). They're almost pure muscle. With tridirectional muscles in the arms, they're a tad less supple than a well-marbled sirloin, to say the least (though certainly a lot more healthful). So over the centuries, people have been finding ways to make them a little easier on the jaw.
The classic tactic is beating the bejesus out of them on rocks. ~ Katherine Harmon Courage

Humans like to consider everything as linear, when in reality everything is cyclic.

They are obsessed with straight lines. Straight roads, straight houses, straight pieces of steel, glass, and timber. Straight cut diamonds. Let's get straight to the point. Be straight with me. I am straight, not gay.

And this is how they see their lives. A linear journey, along the road of life. That is where expressions such as Highway to Hell come from.

But what about other expressions, such as the life cycle, the cycle of nature, and the weather cycle?

Because of this obsession with straight lines, they view history and historical events, as existing way back along an imaginary path, one they are sure they are far away from. Like watching a fading wake from a ship.

So when they look at the religious wars, for example, the Christians versus the Muslims, the rise and fall of Empires, democracies and dictatorships, they seem blind when comparing present day situations with those of the past.

The majority of humans see evolution as a race along a straight race track, a race they are winning by a long margin, yet they are afraid to ever slow down, in case other life catches them.

If they did slow down long enough, they may observe that the track is actually cyclic. ~ Robert Black

The more I read, the more I felt connected across time to other lives and deeper sympathies. I felt less isolated. I wasn't floating on my little raft in the present; there were bridges that led over to solid ground. Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.
Literature is common ground. It is ground not managed wholly by commercial interests, nor can it be strip-mined like popular culture - exploit the new thing then move on.
There's a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world. It is not only a wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations.
Reading is where the wild things are. ~ Jeanette Winterson

The trends speak to an unavoidable truth. Society's future will be challenged by zoonotic viruses, a quite natural prediction, not least because humanity is a potent agent of change, which is the essential fuel of evolution. Notwithstanding these assertions, I began with the intention of leaving the reader with a broader appreciation of viruses: they are not simply life's pathogens. They are life's obligate partners and a formidable force in nature on our planet. As you contemplate the ocean under a setting sun, consider the multitude of virus particles in each milliliter of seawater: flying over wilderness forestry, consider the collective viromes of its living inhabitants. The stunnig number and diversity of viruses in our environment should engender in us greater awe that we are safe among these multitudes than fear that they will harm us.

Personalized medicine will soon become a reality and medical practice will routinely catalogue and weigh a patient's genome sequence. Not long thereafter one might expect this data to be joined by the patient's viral and bacterial metagenomes: the patient's collective genetic identity will be recorded in one printout. We will doubtless discover some of our viral passengers are harmful to our health, while others are protective. But the appreciation of viruses that I hope you have gained from these pages is not about an exercise in accounting. The balancing of benefit versus threat to humanity is a fruitless task. The viral met ~ Michael G. Cordingley

Dominance. It's a key aspect of nature and a driving force in society. It separated the working class and the elite, the rich and the poor. In nature, it's. Lack and white - predator versus prey - but humans have a false sense of right and wrong. They believe in shades of gray. They've deluded themselves into thinking there's such a thing as equality. Segregation is wrong, they say, yet only a hundred years ago, they were cracking the whips. Hypocrisy at its finest. ~ Kel Carpenter

The "us versus them" mindset coupled with our social nature implies that we have an innate need to belong to clearly defined in-groups. ~ Gad Saad

Religious warriors are not an anomaly. It is a mistake to classify believers of particular religious and dogmatic religionlike ideologies into two groups, moderate versus extremist. The true cause of hatred and violence is faith versus faith, an outward expression of the ancient instinct of tribalism. Faith is the one thing that makes otherwise good people do bad things. Nowhere do people tolerate attacks on their person, their family, their country - or their creation myth. In America, for example, it is possible in most places to openly debate different views on religious spirituality - including the nature and even the existence of God, providing it is in the context of theology and philosophy. But it is forbidden to question closely, if at all, the creation myth - the faith - of another person or group, no matter how absurd. To disparage anything in someone else's sacred creation myth is "religious bigotry." It is taken as the equivalent of a personal threat. ~ Edward O. Wilson

The whole tradition of cinema is dominated, really, by films about good guys versus bad guys, good versus evil. But we have very few films about the nature of evil itself. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer

Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at your mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars. ~ Hermann Hesse

I really enjoy surfing a lot. It's an awesome sport. With surfing there are no mind games versus Peyton Manning, or versus anyone else. It's not me trying to throw a certain shot put further - or to put a ball in a hoop, it's just me against mother nature. ~ Troy Polamalu

So I don't see the theme of the story as nature versus science. I see it as a conflict between demanding and understanding, between the kinds of labor that our society values or doesn't value, "innovators" versus "maintainers." It's ~ Nalo Hopkinson

I would want kids to talk and write about how the book makes them feel, what it reminded them of, if it changed their thoughts about anything. I'd have them keep a journal and have them freewrite after they read each assignment. What did this make you think about? That's what I'd want to know. I think you could get some really original ideas that way, not the old regurgitated ones like man versus nature. Just shoot me if I ever assign anyone an essay about man versus nature. Questions like that are designed to pull you completely out of the story. Why would you want to pull kids out of the story? You want to push them further in, so they can feel everything the author tried so hard to create for them. ~ Lily King

God is our final say in who and what's negative and who and what's positive in our lives. It is best not to have this so over-simplified as the illusioned superstitionists have it; an infinite being's tests may not always be so flowery, and the things we may see as positive are in many cases simply desires of our sinful nature. We are to protect our spirit without falling into the narcissistic mistake of trying to protect our selfish emotions, which the latter, in turn, is more than unlikely to bring peace and happiness. But rather guilt and emptiness. When one walks around constantly, in his mind, attempting to separate positive versus negative people, he is already controlled by something even worse than those he calls the 'negative people', and that is before he spots it soon enough to avoid it as he hypocritically tries to avoid them. ~ Criss Jami

Today the environmental movement has become opposed to issues of justice. You can see this in the way issues are framed. It's a permanent replay of jobs-versus-the-environment, in nature-versus-bread. These are extremely artificial dichotomies. ~ Vandana Shiva

Sometimes evil wins, nah, child. But it's always fleeting. Just a temporary ripple in a sea of goodness, brought on by the carnal nature of greed 'n corruption. Sacrifice washes that ripple out in waves of love 'n light, and peace is found when justice is served, even for those who lose, ya hear? ~ Rachael Wade

Humankind is an instinctive creature that is capable of feelings and rational thoughts, which accounts for why such a rich diversity exists amongst human nature. A person's unique personality is simply a crystallization of particular aspects of human nature. Freedom of thought and expression ensures that no person replicates another person's exact persona. Every person is a creature of predicable needs and impulses, infused with the poetry of multifaceted feelings, and ruled by a scientifically calculated instrument capable of precision of thought. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When you break up the individuals from a community into individual units, they become disempowered because it's the collective consciousness and the collective energy of the group from which power comes. The principal driving force that lies before us is that we have to recognize the nature of community as the evolutionary step that we just took a step backwards from in the last century. ~ Bruce H. Lipton

Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If poverty makes man groan, he yawns in opulence. When fortune exempts us from labor, nature overwhelms us with time. ~ Antoine Rivarol

All were successful,and felt like failures.
Gold no longer pretended to understand the nature of success.Instead,he pretended not to. He knew the components that were necessary:
None,
or maybe one:
Dumb luck ~ Joseph Heller

The initial organization of the brain does not depend that much on experience. Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Here's no way we can ever hope to understand ourselves if we don't at least marginally understand our home. That is the understanding we need to put our lives in some bigger metaphysical context. Instead, Eustace sees a chilling sight- a citizenry so removed from the rhythm of nature that we march through our lives as mere sleepwalkers, blinded, deafened, and senseless. Robotically existing in sterilized surroundings that numb the mind, weaken the body, and atrophy the soul. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The place (Dogtown, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, fh) is forsaken and majestically lovely as if nature had at last formed one spot where she can live for herself alone.. (it) looked like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge - essentially druidic in it appearance, it gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there. ~ Marsden Hartley

Nancy grabbed Plum's hand and together they ran around the last curve and then they were leaning against the old stone wall that marked Lookout Hill. Far, far down below them, a river was trying to wriggle its way out of a steep canyon. Over to the right, thick green hills crowded close to each other to share one filmy white cloud. To the left, as far as they could see the land flowed into valleys that shaded from a pale watery green, through lime, emerald, jade, leaf, forest to a dark, dark, bluish-green, almost black. The rivers were like inky lines, the ponds like ink blots. ~ Betty MacDonald

The great delusion of modernity, is that the laws of nature explain the universe for us. The laws of nature describe the universe, they describe the regularities. But they explain nothing. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

When I lie back and close my eyes, this farthest lip of beach right next to the end of the ocean feels like being up close to an enormous breathing being, the bass drum surf thump reverberating through the sand. Living out here with no lights, alone, you would indeed become sensitive to seasons, rhythms, weather, sounds- right up next to the sea, right up under the sky, like lying close to a lover's skin to hear blood and breath and heartbeat. ~ Paul Bogard

A journey deep into the Kingdom of Nature is always a mysterious journey, a Sufistic voyage, a spiritual trip! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

In fact, he was barely a man anymore. He was the devil. And sooner or later the devil destroyed everything in his reach. It was his nature. ~ Eoin Colfer

When you drink in nature through your senses, you deepen your awareness of the great silent intelligence flowing through all things. You nourish your mind, body, and spirit as you connect to the divine love of Being. ~ Deepak Chopra

Anyone who learns the true and hidden nature of the world will be terrified, Oddie, but there's a safe harbor past the terror. ~ Dean Koontz

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver. ~ Martin Luther

The awe-inspiring beauty of nature is nothing more than being flabbergasted by our ignorance of it. Good art produces the same effect; and the worst thing an artist can do is to follow the herd, because domesticated art is about as dynamic as a domesticated animal. ~ Anthony Marais

According to the history of human progress, it is disobedience to nature that has constituted that progress. ~ Swami Vivekananda

'Death with dignity' is our society's expression of the universal yearning to achieve a graceful triumph over the stark and often repugnant finality of life's last sputterings. But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland