Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

by Matt Ridley

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

This is the reality of genes and environments: a maze of complicated interactions between them, not a one-directional determinism.

Intelligence requires a judicious mixture of remembering and forgetting.

Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.