Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Darwinism is summarized by the idea that life evolves through organisms capable of passing on their traits to future generations.
In plain terms
Darwinism means life evolves through organisms that become ancestors.
What can you take from it?
Understand Darwinism as the survival of reproductive success.

Where it applies

  • biology education
  • popular science
  • evolutionary theory

Putting it to work

  • teaching evolution
  • summarizing natural selection
  • explaining life cycles

Questions to consider

  • What defines an ancestor?
  • How does reproduction drive change?

Another view

It simplifies complex mechanisms like genetic drift or neutral theory.

More from Richard Dawkins

  1. If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, sti…

    Permalink to quote #44
  2. Each generation is a filter, a sieve; good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or …

    Permalink to quote #46
  3. The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to ow…

    Permalink to quote #43

Related quotes

  1. Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any sp…

    Charles DarwinCharles Darwin quote #25
  2. One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

    Charles DarwinCharles Darwin quote #28
  3. Each generation is a filter, a sieve; good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or …

    Richard DawkinsRichard Dawkins quote #46