Quotes & Sayings About Environmental Influences

God. However, if we do not believe in the Christian myths about God, creation and souls, what does it mean that all people are 'equal'? Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences. This leads to the development of different qualities that carry with them different chances of survival. 'Created equal' should therefore be translated into 'evolved differently'. — Yuval Noah Harari

Innate mechanisms endow the visual system with highly specific connections, but visual experience early in life is necessary for their maintenance and full development. Deprivation experiments demonstrate that neural connections can be modulated by environmental influences during a critical period of postnatal development. — Torsten Wiesel

Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free who can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn't it, the total emptying of the mind. Completely to empty the whole content of the mind-that is real freedom. Freedom is not mere revolt from circumstances, which again breeds other circumstances, other environmental influences, which enslave the mind. We are talking about a freedom that comes naturally, easily, unasked for, when the mind is capable of functioning at its highest level. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Unfortunately, psychologists know much less about how the environment influences a person's personality than is commonly assumed. People often talk as if the environmental effects had been well understood for decades, and the new discovery was that there were genetic effects too. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The area of environmental influences on personality is a morass of unsupported or poorly tested ideas, and, ironically, it is behaviour geneticists who have brought the most progress to the field. The irony is that behaviour genetics was founded in order to discover heritable influences on human behaviour. The methods such studies use, however, also allow us to identify non-genetic influences, and say quite a lot about them. — Daniel Nettle

Autoimmunity is probably the next frontier. The majority of cases of autoimmune disease result from a complex genetic problem that has environmental influences. It is a colossal task for the immune system to maintain tolerance to self and yet be ready to react to everything in the world around us. — Bruce Beutler

Self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people. — Stephen R. Covey

There is no gene "for" such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. [ ... ] Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channeled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn't even work directly on parts. — Stephen Jay Gould

Nature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture. — Brian Greene

Human brains have three layers of programming. Each layer adds a twist or turn to sexual preferences and tendencies. The first layer is genetic progamming from the inherited genes. The second involves environmental influences that impact genes and their expression. The third level deals with the way we "fill in the blanks" as social and cultural beings. This level can become a feedback loop that influences the inherited genes by influencing with whom we choose to have sex. — Darrel Ray

The biggest difference between humans is the way that we think. Everyone has a different thought process, but the way we achieve this thought process is the same. We all think the way that we do due to our environmental influences. — Joseph P. Kauffman

In order for people to live their own lives and fulfill their destiny, they must differentiate themselves from destructive environmental influences. — Lisa Firestone

The only way you can estimate environmental influences is by measuring them. — Richard Bentall