The Atlantis Gene Quotes

“Here’s a tip. The good guys ask you to get in the truck. The bad guys put a black bag over your head and throw you in the truck. I’m asking.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“Science lacks something very important that religion provides: a moral code. Survival of the fittest is a scientific fact, but it is a cruel ethic; the way of beasts, not a civilized society. Laws can only take us so far, and they must be based upon something—a shared moral code that rises from something. As that moral foundation recedes, so will society’s values.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“It’s always the same war. Only the names of the dead change. It’s always about one thing: which group of rich men get to divvy up the spoils. They call it ‘The Great War’—clever marketing.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“We attack whatever is different, anything we don’t understand, anything that might change our world, our environment, reduce our chances of survival. Racism, class warfare, sexism, east versus west, north and south, capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorships, Islam and Christianity, Israel and Palestine, they’re all different faces of the same war: the war for a homogeneous human race, an end to our differences.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“When you figure out that you're fighting some other man's war, walk away.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“Great leaders are forged from the fire of hard decisions,”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“Ma’am, your husband was killed in an unfortunate Cadbury Creme Egg incident.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“Religion is our desperate attempt to understand our world. And our past. We live in darkness, surrounded by mysteries. Where did we come from? What is our purpose? What will happen to us after we die? Religion also gives us something more: a code of conduct, a blueprint of right and wrong, a guide to human decency. Just like any other tool, it can be misused.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren’t.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“And when he was, when he finally found love after a life without, he died, happy. And the woman, all she ever wanted was to know that she could change the world, and if she could change the heart of the darkest man, then there was hope for the entire human race.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“Life is hard—for everyone—but it’s hell on earth if you’re foolish or weak.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“The human race is the biggest mass murderer of all time. Think about it: we’re hard-coded to survive. Even our ancient ancestors were driven by this impulse, driven enough to recognize the Neanderthals and Hobbits as dangerous enemies. They may have slaughtered dozens of human subspecies. And that legacy shamefully lives on. We attack whatever is different, anything we don’t understand, anything that might change our world, our environment, reduce our chances of survival. Racism, class warfare, sexism, east versus west, north and south, capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorships, Islam and Christianity, Israel and Palestine, they’re all different faces of the same war: the war for a homogeneous human race, an end to our differences. It’s a war we started a long time ago, a war we’ve been fighting ever since. A war that operates in every human mind below the subconscious level, like a computer program, constantly running in the background, guiding us to some eventuality.” Kate didn’t know what to say, couldn’t see how it could involve her trial and her children. “You expect me to believe those two children are involved in an ancient cosmic struggle for the human race?”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“We so often seek what we’re deprived of in childhood. Sheltered children become reckless. Starving children become ambitious.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“We do know that humans got hit hard by the Toba Super Volcano. We were on the brink of extinction. That caused what population geneticists call a ‘population bottleneck.’ Some researchers believe that this bottleneck caused a small group of humans to evolve, to survive through mutation. These mutations could have led to humanity’s exponential explosion in intelligence. There’s genetic evidence for it. We know that every human being on the planet is directly descended from one man who lived in Africa around sixty thousand years ago—a person we geneticists call Y-Chromosomal Adam. In fact, everyone outside of Africa is descended from a small band of humans, maybe as few as one hundred, that left Africa about 50,000 years ago. Essentially, we’re all members of a small tribe that walked out of Africa after Toba and took over the planet. That tribe was significantly more intelligent than any other hominids in history.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“For the first time, he saw the world as it truly was, and he saw dangers all around him—in the beasts of the forest and in his fellow man. As a beast, he had lived in a world of bliss, acting on his instincts, thinking only when he had to, never seeing himself for what he was, never worrying about his mortality, never trying to cheat death. But now his thoughts and fears ruled him. He knew evil for the first time. Your”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“Survival of the fittest is a scientific fact, but it is a cruel ethic; the way of beasts, not a civilized society. Laws can only take us so far, and they must be based upon something—a shared moral code that rises from something. As that moral foundation recedes, so will society’s values.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“She craves genuine things, real people. We so often seek what we’re deprived of in childhood.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“He remembered reading that Antarctica had ninety percent of the world’s ice and seventy percent of its freshwater. If you took all the water in the world, in every lake, pond, stream and even water in the clouds, it wouldn’t come out to even half of the frozen water in Antarctica. When all that ice melted, the world would be a very different place. The sea would rise two hundred feet, nations would fall—or more accurately, drown—low-lying countries like Indonesia would disappear from the map. New York City, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and most of Florida—also gone.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“The attacks did two things really well: ensured there was a war, a big one—and crashed the stock market.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“have a theory. We know there were at least four subspecies of humans fifty thousand years ago: us or anatomically modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo floresiensis or Hobbits. There were probably more that we haven’t found, but those are the four subspecies—”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“A war that operates in every human mind below the subconscious level, like a computer program, constantly running in the background, guiding us to some eventuality.” Kate”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“What? Are you crazy—”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“Religion is our desperate attempt to understand our world. And our past. We live in darkness, surrounded by mysteries. Where did we come from? What is our purpose? What will happen to us after we die? Religion also gives us something more: a code of conduct, a blueprint of right and wrong, a guide to human decency. Just like any other tool, it can be misused. But”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“anything we don’t understand, anything that might change our world, our environment, reduce our chances of survival. Racism, class warfare, sexism, east versus west, north and south, capitalism and communism, democracy and dictatorships, Islam and Christianity, Israel and Palestine, they’re all different faces of the same war: the war for a homogeneous human race, an end to our differences.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“file. “Not surprising. It’s not widely accepted, but it’s a popular theory among evolutionary biologists.” “Popular theory for what?” “The Great Leap Forward.” Kate recognized David’s confusion and continued before he could speak. “The”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“So 50,000 years ago, there’s us, the Neanderthals, Hobbits, and Denisovans. Actually there were probably a couple more hominids, but the point is there were say five or six subspecies of humans. And then our branch of the human tree explodes while the others die out. We go from a few thousand to seven billion people in the span of fifty thousand years and the other human subspecies go extinct. We conquer the globe while they die in caves. It’s the greatest mystery of all time, and scientists have been working on it since time began. Religion too.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“The piano keys represent the genome. We each get different keys, and the keys don’t change throughout our life: we die with the same piano keys, or genome, we’re born with. What changes is the sheet music: the epigenetics. That sheet of music determines what tune is played—what genes are expressed—and those genes determine our traits—everything from IQ to hair color.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“every human alive today is directly descended from a man who lived in Africa sixty thousand years ago.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“The human race is the biggest mass murderer of all time.”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene

“I pull my sidearm and fire at them from point-blank range, killing the first two men, who must have either thought I was dead or couldn’t see me”
― A.G. Riddle, The Atlantis Gene