Susan Blackmore

For the planet's sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we're…

— Susan Blackmore

Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds…

— Susan Blackmore

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they think about memes is they try to extend on the analogy with…

— Susan Blackmore

You start by copying other people's paintings or music or whatever. You get all of those skills before you branch out. Really…

— Susan Blackmore

Take male strategies for success in the world. If you've got all the advantages, if you're attractive and clever and all of…

— Susan Blackmore

The sale of sex in modern societies is not about spreading genes. Sex has been taken over by the memes.

— Susan Blackmore

In proportion to our body mass, our brain is three times as large as that of our nearest relatives. This huge organ…

— Susan Blackmore

Free will and consciousness is an illusion, and the self is a complex of memes.

— Susan Blackmore

If everyone understood evolution, then the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans might find a better way…

— Susan Blackmore

Finally, we might decide that civilisation itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and…

— Susan Blackmore

Imagine a world full of brains, and far more memes than can possibly find homes. Which memes are more likely to find…

— Susan Blackmore

All other species on this planet are gene machines only. They don't imitate at all well; we alone are gene machines and…

— Susan Blackmore

“What happens when an animal or person dies? Something seems to have departed--something like a vital spark that makes the difference between…

— Susan Blackmore

I have not come up with anything original. It needs a better brain than mine! I have done what I can do…

— Susan Blackmore

Consciousness is an illusion constructed by the memes.

— Susan Blackmore

'Temes' [technology-enhanced memes] don't care about us - they simply want to create more of themselves. Don't think we created the internet…

— Susan Blackmore

Science has, after all, made some colossal blunders in the past... Our current materialism and its rejection of the idea of a…

— Susan Blackmore

Memetics provides a new approach to the evolution of language in which we apply Darwinian thinking to two replicators, not one. On…

— Susan Blackmore

All things considered, I can see no reason to adopt the afterlife hypothesis. I am sure I shall remain in a minority…

— Susan Blackmore

Certainly almost everything we do and think is colored in some way by memes, but it is important to realize that not…

— Susan Blackmore

“It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic…

— Susan Blackmore

If you found a mammal with feathers, then you'd know that Darwin was wrong. Well, it's rather the same with memes.

— Susan Blackmore

Parapsychology seems to be growing further away from the progress and excitement of the rest of consciousness studies.

— Susan Blackmore

“When I say that consciousness is an illusion I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is…

— Susan Blackmore