24 Quotes by John Maynard Smith

The evolution of sex is the hardest problem in evolutionary biology.

So far, we have been able to study only one evolving system and we cannot wait for interstellar flight to provide us with a second. If we want to discover generalizations about evolving systems, we will have to look at artificial ones.

Mathematics is so much easier than words mathematics makes things clear that words merely muddle and confuse and mess up.

Language changes very fast.

It is in the nature of science that once a position becomes orthodox it should be suggested to criticism.... It does not follow that, because a position is orthodox, it is wrong.

Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.

Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed

Mathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled.

Evolutionary game theory is a way of thinking about evolution at the phenotypic level when the fitnesses of particular phenotypes depend on their frequencies in the population.