We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

I am an enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene.

One way to express the answer is that it might happen by 'chance'. But 'chance' is just a word expressing ignorance. It means 'determined by some as yet unknown, or unspecified, means'.

Chance" is just a word expressing ignorance

It requires a deliberate mental effort to turn biology the right way up again, and remind ourselves that the replicators come first, in importance as well as in history.

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities

What shall it profit a male if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his immortal genes?

Writers fly with imaginary wings.

Nothing is a better icebreaker than a great joke.

When I was starting out, young actresses had the studio system to protect them. Now you have a host of sharks, from your agent to your publicist to your lawyer.

Talent is a flame, but genius is a fire.

New Year's resolution: To refrain from saying witty, unkind things, unless they are really witty and irreparably damaging.

The emigrants although of different parties and different religious sects all flew from persecution in pursuit of liberty.

Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our 'salvation' if we thought it through.

Nothing is lost as long as courage remains

Let us learn from Christ how to pray, to forgive, to sow peace, and to be near those in need.