Authors:

Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 13

All Quotes Abuse Age Arguing Art Atheism Atheist Belief Biology Business Character Childhood Children Christ Clarity Consciousness Country Creation Creativity Crime Culture Curiosity Death Debate Design Desire Doubt Dying Earth Economics Education Energy Evidence Evil Evolution Faith Feelings Fighting Flying Fun Generosity Giving Giving Up God Hate Heaven Hell House Humanity Hurt Ignorance Imagination Intuition Islam Jesus Judgment Knowledge Learning Life Literature Lying Magic Memories Morality Offense Passion Past Perspective Physics Probability Psychology Purpose Reading Reality Religion Responsibility Revelations Risk Running School Science Science And Religion Science Fiction Scripture Simplicity Sleep Sports Study Suffering Survival Teaching Technology Today Understanding Universe Violence Waiting Water Winning Wisdom Writing
The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children

The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Children, Miracle

My computer is a very complex gadget and it was designed by many designers, so why must the universe have only a single designer and not many designers?

Richard Dawkins
Gadgets, Computer, Designer
Source: www.nairaland.com

It is an absurd law [Section 295A of the Indian penal code] but also extremely dangerous because it gives fanatics, whether they are Hindus, Catholics or Muslims, a licence to be offended. It also allows people who are in dispute with you to make up false accusations of blasphemy.

Richard Dawkins
Law, People, Giving

It can be consoling to think your children are in heaven. You have got to understand that that doesn't make it true. Many people cannot understand that distinction.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Thinking, People
Source: newrepublic.com

Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. The watchmaker is blind

Richard Dawkins
Survival, Evolution, Blind

My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about.

Richard Dawkins
Dream, Mind, Wonderful
Source: inters.org

One of the possible reasons why we might be good is that we're frightened, frightened of God. We want the reward in Heaven, we don't want to go to Hell. That would be an ignoble, ignominious reason for being good, and I think that if anybody was good to you just because they hoped for a heavenly reward, you wouldn't respect them, you'd probably give them a wide berth.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Giving, Heaven
"Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". "The Science Show" with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

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
Selfish, Generosity, Design
The Selfish Gene ch. 1 (1976)

Religion is a powerful weapon that can be used because it persuades people to do things. And thus it can be used for good or ill. But it should not be a powerful weapon at all.

Richard Dawkins
Powerful, People, Weapons
"Interview: Richard Dawkins Keeps Making New Enemies". Interview with Isaac Chotiner, newrepublic.com. October 29, 2013.

Five per cent vision is better than no vision at all. Five per cent hearing is better than no hearing at all. Five per cent flight efficiency is better than no flight at all. It is thoroughly believable that every organ or apparatus that we actually see is the product of a smooth trajectory through animal space, a trajectory in which every intermediate stage assisted survival and reproduction.

Richard Dawkins
Science, Animal, Space
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.96, W. W. Norton & Company

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.

Richard Dawkins
Christian, Children, Parent

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.

Richard Dawkins
Life, Science, Reality
The Blind Watchmaker Chapter 11

I think from my point of view - I won't say it doesn't matter whether [Darwinian explanations] are right or wrong, it's just sufficient in some cases, for me, to be able to say, Well, at least it's not totally implausible from a Darwinian point of view.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Views, Matter
Source: newrepublic.com

I think what attracts me about the Electric Monk is that it's such an eloquent example of the futility of belief for belief's sake. I mean there's only any point in believing something if it's true.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Mean, Thinking

A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.

Richard Dawkins
Selfishness, Would Be, Sitting
Richard Dawkins (1989). “The Selfish Gene”, p.88, Oxford University Press, USA

The God of the Old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.

Richard Dawkins
God, Religious, Atheist
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, Rebel, Machines
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.221, Oxford University Press

Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog?

Richard Dawkins
Dog, Atheist, Thinking

Whether we ever get to know about them or not, there are very probably alien civilizations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine. Their technical achievements would seem as supernatural to us as ours would seem to a Dark Age peasant transported to the twenty-first century. Imagine his response to a laptop computer, a mobile telephone, a hydrogen bomb or a jumbo jet.

Richard Dawkins
Dark, Civilization, Hydrogen Bomb
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.98, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Presumably there is indeed no purpose in the ultimate fate of the cosmos, but do any of us really tie our life's hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway? Of course we don't; not if we are sane. Our lives are ruled by all sorts of closer, warmer, human ambitions and perceptions.

Richard Dawkins
Ambition, Fate, Ties
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.11, Oxford University Press

Religion is nothing more than a useless and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Religion, Useless

I remember at the age of six regaling my poor little sister with stories about the planets, and how far away they were and which ones might have life.

Richard Dawkins
Little Sister, Age, Littles
Source: newrepublic.com

It is immoral to brand children with religion. 'This is a Catholic child.' 'That is a Muslim child.' I want everyone to flinch when they hear such a phrase, just as they would if they heard, 'That is a Marxist child.'

Richard Dawkins
Children, Catholic, Phrases

In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically, those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to survive.

Richard Dawkins
Science, Survival, Quality
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.65, W. W. Norton & Company

Such a bandwidth! God, who may not have a brain made of neurons, or a CPU made of silicon, but if he has the powers attributed to him he must have something far more elaborately and non-randomly constructed than the largest brain or the largest computer we know.

Richard Dawkins
Brain, Neurons, May
"The God Delusion". Book by Richard Dawkins, 2006.