The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior. However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals. 'Special' and 'limited' are important words in the last sentence. Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.

Jean de la Bruyere

So if you're a customer today, the same person who came in to demonstrate the technology for you and helped you architect the solution before you bought it is likely going to be leading the team to help you do the implementation.

Sanjay Kumar

I'm quite convinced in my own mind that those who were arguing that was a more immediate one than some believed - were I'm sure convinced that they were right on fact, I don't think they were making it up. So as to lying, I don't think it has been established that any lies were told.

Christopher Hitchens

In working with UNICEF our corporate partners have demonstrated time and again that their financial resources, leadership and expertise can bring about real and lasting benefits for the world's children.

Carol Bellamy

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.

George Bernard Shaw

But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

C.S. Lewis

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.

Samuel Johnson

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.

John Stuart Mill

The way to secure peace is to be prepared for war.

Benjamin Franklin

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

Mark Twain

A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.

Andre Maurois

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule...

Albert Einstein