“Druids always pick the hard way; it encourages natural selection.”

“Blind nature will nearly always select the most probable, but man can let the most improbable become actual.”

“At present the universities are as uncongenial to teaching as the Mojave Desert to a clutch of Druid priests. If you want to restore a Druid priesthood, you cannot do it by offering prizes for Druid-of-the Year. If you want Druids, you must grow forests.”

“Natural selection is a blind and undirected consequence of the interaction between variation and the environment. Natural selection exists only in the continuous present of the natural world: it has no memory of its previous actions, no plans for the future, or underlying purpose.”

“I was not a natural. . . . This is the story of becoming . . . the Hard Way.”

“Smoking will probably kill me, but so will natural selection.”