A Simple Fact about the Process of Evolution

From Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, page 120, by Daniel Dennett (Viking Penquin 2006):

Evolution is all about processes that almost never happen. Every birth in every lineage is a potential speciation event, but speciation almost never happens, not once in a million births. Mutation in DNA almost never happens-not once in a trillion copyings-but evolution depends on it. Take the set of infrequent accidents-things that almost never happen-and sort them into the happy accidents, the neutral accidents, and the fatal accidents; amplify the effects of the happy accidents-which happens automatically when you have replication and competition-and you get evolution.