We consciously decide whether to consider people; we fall in love despite ourselves; we entirely fail to fall in love with people who fall in love with us. It is a mightily complicated business.

Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will.

Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.

Note even Jonathan Swift would dare to write a satire in which politicians argued that - in a world where species are vanishing and more than a billion people are barely able to afford to eat - it would somehow be good for the planet to clear rain-forests to grow palm oil, or give up food-crop land to grow biofuels, solely so that people could burn fuel derived from carbohydrate rather than hydrocarbons in their cars, thus driving up the price of food for the poor. Ludicrous is too weak a word for this heinous crime.

Intelligence will become more and more collective; innovation and order will become more and more bottom-up.

Genes are biochemical recipes written in a four-letter alphabet called DNA.

It is not a zero sum game. The simple idea of the gains from trade lies at the heart of the modern and the ancient economy, not the power of capital. There is nothing else to it.