Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world around him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, 'This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.' The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
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If human intelligence is largely a matter of heredity, then how stupid and gullible did God make Adam and Eve; how wise and clever the serpent?
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Heredity is a strong factor, even in architecture. Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
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Heredity is nothing, but stored environment.
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Both of these branches of evolutionary science, are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation.
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There's a lot of heredity in that family.
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We do not know, in most cases, how far social failure and success are due to heredity, and how far to environment. But environment is the easier of the two to improve.
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Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery.
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Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.
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