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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 16

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In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our

In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.

Richard Dawkins
Skulls, Childhood, Parent

Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle.

Richard Dawkins
Belief, Argument, Cradle
"The atheist". Interview with Gordy Slack, www.salon.com. April 30, 2005.

When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.

Richard Dawkins
Machines, Too Much, Emphasis

The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence … The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held to us as worthy of imitation.

Richard Dawkins
Strong, Doubt, Needs
Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene”, p.198, Oxford University Press, USA

The physicist's problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist's problem is the problem of complexity.

Richard Dawkins
Science, Law, Problem
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.26, W. W. Norton & Company

I would like to find a way in which people in Saudi Arabia could learn that they can be something other than a Muslim. Some people may not realize this. Of course, there is the problem that you can get in trouble or get stoned.

Richard Dawkins
People, Arabia, May
"Richard Dawkins Keeps Making New Enemies". Interview with Isaac Chotiner, newrepublic.com. October 29, 2013.

Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, Generosity, Trying
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.25, Oxford University Press

Religions do make claims about the universe--the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false.

Richard Dawkins
Religion, Libertarian, Kind

To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow pre-ordained for us, because we are so well-suited to live in it, he [Douglas Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle.

Richard Dawkins
Water, Religion, Puddles

The river of my title is a river of DNA, a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues

Richard Dawkins
Dna, Rivers, Titles
Richard Dawkins (1995). “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life”, Basic Books (AZ)

The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors.

Richard Dawkins
Agendas, Suits, Scientist
"God’s Gift to Kansas" by Richard Dawkins, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 23, 2005.

It has been convincingly demonstrated that countries where there are high rates of poverty, or high rates of economic inequality, are the countries with the highest rates of religious beliefs.

Richard Dawkins
Country, Religious, Economic Inequality

Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.

Richard Dawkins
Past, Quality, Unlikely
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.129, W. W. Norton & Company

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 potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.

Richard Dawkins
Light, People, Lucky
Unweaving the Rainbow ch. 1 (1998)

I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed.

Richard Dawkins
Beautiful, Strong, Feelings
"Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments" by Susan Salter Reynolds, www.latimes.com. October 11, 2009.

Our subjective judgment of what seems like a good bet is irrelevant to what is actually a good bet.

Richard Dawkins
Judgment, Subjective, Seems
"The Blind Watchmaker". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1986.

Molecular genetics can show off some surprising relationships like, for example, the close relationship of whales to hippopotamuses, which I think nobody ever guessed until molecular data was looked at. The closest relatives of whales are hippopotamuses, even closer than any other cloven-hoofed animals.

Richard Dawkins
Animal, Thinking, Whales
Source: www.lightspeedmagazine.com

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
Hysteria, Needs, Cloning

Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false.

Richard Dawkins
Teaching, Theory Of Evolution, Immorality
Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.402, Simon and Schuster

The messages that DNA molecules contain are all but eternal when seen against the time scale of individual lifetimes. The lifetimes of DNA messages give or take a few mutations are measured in units ranging from millions of years to hundreds of millions of years; or, in other words, ranging from 10,000 individual lifetimes to a trillion individual lifetimes. Each individual organism should be seen as a temporary vehicle, in which DNA messages spend a tiny fraction of their geological lifetimes.

Richard Dawkins
Dna, Years, Giving

Atheists are the new gays; in the closet and pretty much disqualified from public office.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Gay, Office

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

Richard Dawkins
Atheism, Looks, Different

People will listen to sophisticated physicists, using God as a kind of metaphor for the deep constants, the deep problems, the deep principles of physics, and say that in that sense I believe in God. The reaction is, "Oh, this great physicist believes in God - that means I'm free to believe in the trinity and in the crucifixion and in the reincarnation of Christ" - and all that stuff, which of course has nothing whatever to do with the fundamental constants of physics, which is what these physicists are talking about.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Mean, Talking
"Faith and Reason" Interview, www.pbs.org.

Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.

Richard Dawkins
Suffering, Atheism, Kind
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I think what I'd really like to see would be a mass consciousness-raising movement so that we would all become vegetarian.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Would Be, Movement