This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step.

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

It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble.

Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations.

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

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.

You couldn't have human society without language.