You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.
Interpretation
A person's character can be understood by examining their life circumstances and how they have thrived despite challenges.
This quote by Richard Dawkins emphasizes the idea that one's character is often shaped by the environment and conditions one encounters throughout life. By analyzing the adversities and experiences that a person has faced and successfully navigated, we can gain deeper insights into their true nature, values, and resilience, reflecting a broader understanding of human behavior and development.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a discussion about personal growth during difficult times.
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.
I am God's vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.
Unless I understand the Cross, I cannot understand why my commitment to what is right must be precedence over what I prefer.
The carrying power of a bridge is not the average strength of the pillars, but the strength of the weakest pillar. I have always believed that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP but by the condition of its worst off.
Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of the (angel's) garments, the waving robes of those whose faces see God.
All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well.
You're born in pain and pain is what we're in most of the time. And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.