I do not see any sense in continuing to skirmish on a battlefield where I can never hope to win. The Cambridge system is effectively designed to prev… - Fred Hoyle

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension... Once let the sheer isolation of the Earth become plain to every man, whatever his nationality or creed, and a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose. (1948)

The attitude of the conservative is basically wrong: change should not be opposed. Not in a root and branch sense. What the conservatives should demand and insist on is that any projected changes should be reversible. The deadly changes are those which are irreversible, like the British introducing Greeks into Cyprus. Or like taking the sparrow and the rabbit to Australia. So long as a projected change can be shown to be reversible there should be no very serious objection to making a tryout. If the first step along the new road turns out well, the second step can be made, but if it turns out badly one simply retreats to where one was before. This seems to me to be the essential principle of social change.

Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.