“I conjecture that co-adapted meme-complexes evolve in the same kind of way as co-adapted gene-complexes. Selection favours memes that exploit their cultural environment to their own advantages.”

“When we look at the evolution of cultural traits and at their survival value, we must be clear whose survival is most are talking about… What we have not previously considered is that a cultural trait may have evolved in the way that it has, simply because it is advantageous to itself.”

“An important property of any copying process: it is not perfect. Mistakes will happen.”

“Erratic copying in biological replicators can in a real sense give rise to improvement, and it was essential for the progressive evolution of life that some errors were made… it is ultimately these mistakes that make evolution possible.”

“In the lifetime of a man, things that are that improbable can be treated for practical purposes as impossible… But in our human estimates of what is probable and what is not, we are not used to dealing in hundreds of millions of years.”