They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

I don't want to sound callous. I mean, even if I have nothing to offer, that doesn't matter, because that still doesn't mean that what anybody else has to offer therefore has to be true.

The whole of technology depends on a scientific background, and of course technology can be used for evil purposes. You can't blame science for that.

If it is solely an evolutionary convenience, there is really no such thing as good or evil.

In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science, because it was for the good of the Communist Party.

It's a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn't think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed so that he could forgive himself.

If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.