Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever. .Richard Dawkins
About This Quote
The writer of the above quote is the esteemed biologist, J.B.S. Haldane, who said it in 1927. He was talking about the idea that our DNA is passed down to us from previous generations, just as his own DNA was passed down to him from previous generations.
Source: The Selfish Gene
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