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Richard Dawkins Quotes

Kenyan-English ethologist, Birth: 26-3-1941 Richard Dawkins Quotes
1.
Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense.
Richard Dawkins

Despite our optimism, altruism and global well-being are not logical from an evolutionary standpoint.
2.
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Richard Dawkins

3.
Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.
Richard Dawkins

4.
Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion.
Richard Dawkins

Trust is acceptance without evidence and rationale; remarkably that's also the definition of fantasy.
5.
Evolution is just a theory? Well, so is gravity and I don't see you jumping out of buildings.
Richard Dawkins

'Though evolution is merely a supposition, the same can be said of gravity and you certainly don't see anyone leaping off tall structures.'
Similar Authors: Temple Grandin Frans de Waal Lyall Watson Karl von Frisch Adriaan Kortlandt Nikolaas Tinbergen
6.
Such delusions of grandeur to think that a God with a hundred billion galaxies on his mind would give a tuppenny damn who you sleep with, or indeed whether you believe in him.
Richard Dawkins

Such fantasies of importance to think that a Deity with a hundred billion galaxies in his thoughts would give two hoots who you take to bed, or even if you believe in him.
7.
The less you think, the more you believe.
Richard Dawkins

The fewer your doubts, the stronger your faith.
8.
How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.
Richard Dawkins

It is commendable of the divine to have structured things so that wherever one is born, the nearby faith consistently appears to be accurate.
Quote Topics by Richard Dawkins: Thinking People Believe Atheist Religion Children Religious Atheism Mean Science Evolution Ideas World Book Evil Doe Selfish Views Real Giving Needs Belief Way Powerful Years Brain Mind Christian Dna Simple
9.
It's a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn't think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed so that he could forgive himself.
Richard Dawkins

10.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Richard Dawkins

11.
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, out number the sand grains in the Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here. The number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist... we are privileged to be alive and nd we should make the most of our time on this world.
Richard Dawkins

12.
Science is the poetry of reality.
Richard Dawkins

13.
The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.
Richard Dawkins

14.
Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are ‘valid,’ let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.
Richard Dawkins

15.
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.
Richard Dawkins

16.
Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.
Richard Dawkins

17.
Don't ask God to cure cancer and world poverty. He's too busy finding you a parking space and fixing the weather for your barbecue.
Richard Dawkins

18.
Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.
Richard Dawkins

19.
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
Richard Dawkins

20.
It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.
Richard Dawkins

21.
It's a truly disgusting idea that the creator of the universe - capable of inventing the laws of physics and designing the evolutionary process - that this protégé of supernatural intellect couldn't think of a better way to forgive our sins than to have himself tortured to death.
Richard Dawkins

22.
Cloning may be good and it may be bad. Probably it's a bit of both. The question must not be greeted with reflex hysteria but decided quietly, soberly and on its own merits. We need less emotion and more thought.
Richard Dawkins

23.
What I can't understand is why you can't see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing - that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?
Richard Dawkins

24.
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Richard Dawkins

25.
If you listen to two people who are arguing about something, and they each of them have passionate faith that they're right, but they believe different things---they belong to different religions, different faiths, there is nothing they can do to settle their disagreement short of shooting each other, which is what they very often actually do.
Richard Dawkins

26.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
Richard Dawkins

27.
Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well.
Richard Dawkins

28.
We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.
Richard Dawkins

29.
If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.
Richard Dawkins

30.
The truth is more magical - in the best and most exciting sense of the word - than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.
Richard Dawkins

31.
Religion: Together we can find the cure.
Richard Dawkins

32.
We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. ... This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object's sole reason for living.
Richard Dawkins

33.
Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about Nazism.
Richard Dawkins

34.
An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
Richard Dawkins

35.
Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.
Richard Dawkins

36.
I detest 'Jingle Bells,' 'White Christmas,' 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,' and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too.
Richard Dawkins

37.
The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.
Richard Dawkins

38.
I am not an enthusiast for diversity of opinion where facts are concerned.
Richard Dawkins

39.
The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.
Richard Dawkins

40.
Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.
Richard Dawkins

41.
The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.
Richard Dawkins

42.
Next time that somebody tells you something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.
Richard Dawkins

43.
Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
Richard Dawkins

44.
Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
Richard Dawkins

45.
People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you'd never be confident of things like 'My wife loves me'. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn't purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
Richard Dawkins

46.
Religious faith, is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, it doesn't matter what, without a whisper of doubt, or a whiff of evidence, and believe so strongly in some cases, that they are prepare to kill and die for it, without the need for further justification.
Richard Dawkins

47.
I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.
Richard Dawkins

48.
Do you really mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward? That's not morality, that's just sucking up.
Richard Dawkins

49.
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Richard Dawkins

50.
Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.
Richard Dawkins