Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public.

The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new.

Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up to date in their chemical knowledge.

Now, if the cooperation of some thousands of millions of cells in our brain can produce our consciousness, a true singularity, the idea becomes vastly more plausible that the cooperation of humanity, or some sections of it, may determine what Comte calls a Great Being.

My final word, before I'm done, Is "Cancer can be rather fun"- Provided one confronts the tumour with a sufficient sense of humour. I know that cancer often kills, But so do cars and sleeping pills; And it can hurt till one sweats, So can bad teeth and unpaid debts. A spot of laughter, I am sure, Often accelerates one's cure; So let us patients do our bit To help the surgeons make us fit.

There can be no truce between science and religion.

Religion is still parasitic in the interstices of our knowledge which have not yet been filled. Like bed-bugs in the cracks of walls and furniture, miracles lurk in the lacunae of science. The scientist plasters up these cracks in our knowledge; the more militant Rationalist swats the bugs in the open. Both have their proper sphere and they should realize that they are allies.