Shay

“Evolution, or its driving engine natural selection, has no foresight. In every generation within every species, the individuals best equipped to survive and reproduce contribute more than their fair share of genes to the next generation. The consequence, blind as it is, is the nearest approach to foresight that nature permits. [...] It is always tinkering: here shrinking a bit, there expanding a bit, constantly adjusting, putting on and taking off, optimising immediate reproductive success. Survival in future centuries doesn’t enter into the calculation, for the good reason that it isn’t really a calculation at all. It all happens automatically, as some genes survive in the gene pool and others don’t.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

“An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.”
― Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

“I wrote a "holy book" as a fun way to test if I could and see if people could believe in it, before long people told me they were seeing visions of the gods and afterlife I had described. People had really strong faith in the scriptures I had written. Of course I insisted they were inspired. And they believed it. You can't imagine how gullible people can be”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life