... you need more than luck to navigate successfully through a thousand sieves in succession.

Sometimes in life it is a good idea to stop,sometimes it is a good idea to go on. The trick is to decide when to stop

I have never quite understood - and this is no doubt my failing - I never quite understood why you would read fiction to understand the human condition.

The replicators that exist tend to be the ones that are good at manipulating the world to their own advantage. But other replicators are also successful otherwise they would not be common. The world therefore tends to become populated by mutually compatible sets of successful replicators, replicators that get on well together

Suffering is a byproduct of evolution by natural selection, an inevitable consequence that may worry us in our more sympathetic moments but cannot be expected to worry a tiger - even if a tiger can be said to worry about anything at all - and certainly cannot be expected to worry its genes.

It is possible in medicine, even when you intend to do good, to do harm instead. That is why science thrives on actively encouraging criticism rather than stifling it.

The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened