Randolph M. Nesse

“[Mood allocates] investments of time, effort, resources, and risk taking to maximize Darwinian fitness in situations of varying propitiousness. High and low…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“The current danger for most of us is not the deprivation suffered by our ancestors but an excess of nutrition.”

— Randolph M. Nesse

“The current danger for most of us is not the deprivation suffered bu our ancestors but an excess of nutrition.”

— Randolph M. Nesse

I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove.

— Randolph M. Nesse

“People are not controlled by some internal calculator that crudely motivates them to maximize their reproductive success. Instead, people form deep, lifelong…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Darwinism gives no moral guidelines about how we should live or how doctors should practice medicine. A Darwinian perspective on medicine can,…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Therapists have long known that many depressions go away only after a person finally gives up some long-sought goal and turns his…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Paradoxically, it now is much easier to treat many mental disorders than it is to understand them.”

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Long before there were effective treatments, physicians dispensed prognoses, hope, and, above all, meaning. When something terrible happens-and serious disease is always…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Thanks to subsequent years of conversations with evolutionists, especially Williams, and with medical school residents and faculty, he has found that an…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Emotional capacities are shaped by situations that occurred repeatedly in the course of evolution and that were important to fitness. Attacks by…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Every textbook description of a disease should have, in our opinion, a section devoted to its evolutionary aspects. This section should address…

— Randolph M. Nesse

Natural selection involves no plan, no goal, and no direction — just genes increasing and decreasing in frequency depending on whether individuals…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Even our behavior and emotions seem to have been shaped by a prankster. Why do we crave the very foods that are…

— Randolph M. Nesse

The body is a bundle of careful compromises.

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Our dietary problems arise from a mismatch between the tastes evolved for Stone Age conditions and their likely effects today. Fat, sugar,…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Chlamydia, today´s most common cause of venereal disease, does the equivalent of hiding in the police station. Schistosomes of the mansoni type…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“During most all of human evolution, it was adaptive to conserve energy by being lazy as circumstances permitted. Energy was a vitally…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Except for professional athletes, dancers, cowboys, and a few other groups, most people in modern industrial societies have abnormally low energy expenditures.…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Just as the capacity for experiencing fatigue has evolved to protect us from overexertion, the capacity for sadness may have evolved to…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Depression may seem completely useless. Even apart from the risk of suicide, sitting all day morosely staring at the wall can't get…

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Why has the medical profession not taken advantage of the help available from evolutionary biology, a well-developed branch of science with great…

— Randolph M. Nesse

If you could make male mortality rates the same as female rates, you would do more good than curing cancer.

— Randolph M. Nesse

“Just as there are several components of the immune system, each of which protects us against particular kinds of invasions, there are…

— Randolph M. Nesse