A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.

I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification.

Genetic modification is a very powerful tool. But like any powerful tool, when using it, you have to take into account the environmental impact, the food safety aspects and so on. There must be a strong regulatory mechanism.

If our system continues without modification involving environmental and social concern, we will face an economic and social breakdown of our outdated monetary and political system.

I tried a dozen different modifications that were rejected. But they all served as a path to the final design.

"...it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait -- a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with every tiny readjustment of the 'values,' with every modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. And, finally, it is your

Aten, a minor solar God ? a red disc from which long rays emanated and reached down to earth ? was converted into the supreme God, in fact the one and only God, by Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh. Aten evolved into Jehovah, and Akhenaten's religion evolved into Jewish monotheism. Akhenaten, or someone very close to him, is the true Moses of the Bible, standing up for the One God against Egyptian polytheism, and leading a mass Exodus of his monotheistic followers away from pagan Egypt to a new Promised Land. Jehovah, therefore, is just a modification of a minor Egyptian sun God.

"I like maxims that don't encourage behavior modification.

A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together adding to it shaping it and one's religion is never complete and final it seems but must always be undergoing modification.

I mean we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification.

Something I've realized lately to my shock is that I am an optimist in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification and that we really can build the future that we want if we're smart about it.

I tried a dozen different modifications that were rejected. But they all served as a path to the final design.