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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 17

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The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull', and it really shouldn't - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning 'the world'. And the world is anything but dull: The world

The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull', and it really shouldn't - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning 'the world'. And the world is anything but dull: The world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.

Richard Dawkins
Real, Latin, Mean

When we talk about genes for anything, like a gene for being gay or a gene for being aggressive or something of that sort, that a gene for anything may not have been a gene for that thing under different environmental conditions.

Richard Dawkins
Gay, Environmental, Different
"The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy" with John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley, www.lightspeedmagazine.com. December 2011.

Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.

Richard Dawkins
Technology, Common Sense, Doe
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.410, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye.

Richard Dawkins
Eye, Answers, Half

[Richard Leakey is] a robust hero of a man, who actually lives up to the cliché, “a big man in every sense of the word.” Like other big men he is loved by many, feared by some, and not over-preoccupied with the judgments of any.

Richard Dawkins
Hero, Men, Robust
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.236, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.

Richard Dawkins
Psychology, Desire, Belief
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.221, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.

Richard Dawkins
Dna, Levels, Genes
"Richard Dawkins on the Truth of Evolution". "NOW with Bill Moyers", billmoyers.com. 2004.

What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?

Richard Dawkins
People, Trying, Elitist

The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don't.

Richard Dawkins
Ideas, Matter, Facts

Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression.

Richard Dawkins
Mistake, Thinking, Talking
"Darwin's child". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. February 10, 2003.

Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.

Richard Dawkins
Responsibility, Moral, Humans
Source: inters.org

People who criticize The Selfish Gene like that often haven't read it. The selfish gene accounts for altruism toward kin and individuals who might be in a position to reciprocate your altruism.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, People, Might
Source: newrepublic.com

I find many of answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist.

Richard Dawkins
Spiritual, Thinking, Answers
Source: inters.org

In two senses: One is that you cannot go on the street and shout that you are an atheist, the other is that you are never given the intellectual framework for calling your faith into question.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Two, Intellectual
Source: newrepublic.com

The rule of thumb based into the brain by natural selection would not have been, Be nice to your kin and be nice to potential reciprocators. It would have been, Be nice to everybody, because everybody would have been included.

Richard Dawkins
Nice, Brain, Thumbs
Source: newrepublic.com

My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side.

Richard Dawkins
Philosophical, Sides, Biology

If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle.

Richard Dawkins
Doors, Miracle, Faces
"God vs. Science". Interview with David Van Biema, content.time.com. November 5, 2006.

It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests.

Richard Dawkins
Ignorance, Challenges, Essentials
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It's very important to try to inculcate into children moral rules, such as "do as you would be done by."

Richard Dawkins
Children, Important, Trying
PBS Interview, www.pbs.org.

My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.

Richard Dawkins
Real, Justice, Sublime
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution”, p.700, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.

Richard Dawkins
Years, Long, Generations
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Father, Science
Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, April 15, 1992.

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

Richard Dawkins
Appreciation, Thinking, Class
"The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

The other way is the multiverse way. That says that maybe the universe we are in is one of a very large number of universes. The vast majority will not contain life because they have the wrong gravitational constant or the wrong this constant or that constant. But as the number of universes climbs, the odds mount that a tiny minority of universes will have the right fine-tuning.

Richard Dawkins
Numbers, Odds, Tuning
Source: inters.org

Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature.

Richard Dawkins
Goal, Modern Life, Use
"Darwin's Dangerous Disciple". Interview with Frank Miele, 1995.