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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 2

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Science is the poetry of reality.

Science is the poetry of reality.

Richard Dawkins
Reality
"The Enemies of Reason: Slaves to Superstition". TV Movie, August 13, 2007.

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
Ignorance, Simple, Religion
"Should Religion Impact Your Vote?" by Roy Speckhardt, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 7, 2011.

Religious people are atheists about all other gods, atheists only take it one god further.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Atheist, People

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
Cancer, Weather, Space

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

Richard Dawkins
Health, Theory Of Evolution, Inspire
Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition”, p.30, OUP Oxford

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
Believe, Sleep, Thinking
YouTube Channel "RodiAgnusDei"/"Richard Dawkins debates Rowan Williams", www.youtube.com. February 05, 2013.

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
Beautiful, Extraordinary Beauty, Ideas
"Richard Dawkins: I Can't Be Sure God Does Not Exist". www.telegraph.co.uk. February 24, 2012.

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
God, Christian, Atheist
"Militant Atheism". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February 2002.

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
Religious, Believe, People

You believe that all humanity came from Adam and Eve, and humans have not evolved at all since. So tell me; between the two of them, which was black, which was white, and which was Asian?

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Two, White

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
Ignorance, Knowledge, Science
"The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

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
Love, Kindness, Real
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.246, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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
Reality, Fiction, Literature

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
Health, Theory Of Evolution, Inspire
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.300, W. W. Norton & Company

On one planet [earth], and possibly only one planet in the entire universe, molecules that would normally make nothing more complicated than a chunk of rock, gather themselves together into chunks of rock-sized matter of such staggering complexity that they are capable of running, jumping, swimming, flying, seeing, hearing, capturing and eating other such animated chunks of complexity; capable in some cases of thinking and feeling, and falling in love with yet other chunks of complex matter.

Richard Dawkins
Running, Falling In Love, Swimming

Sometimes in life it is a good idea to stop,sometimes it is a good idea to go on. The trick is to decide when to stop

Richard Dawkins
Ideas, Goes On, Sometimes
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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
Atheist, Flying, Monsters
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think.

Richard Dawkins
Faith, Atheist, Thinking

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

Richard Dawkins
Selfishness, Disguise, Inspection
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.26, Oxford University Press

If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Children, Work Out
"Richard Dawkins's backwards logic over atheist schooling" by Andrew Brown, www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2010.

Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunise against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin.

Richard Dawkins
Wages, Done, Pestilence

Isn't it a remarkable coincidence almost everyone has the same religion as their parents ? And it always just happens to be the right religion. Religions run in families. If we'd been brought up in ancient Greece we would all be worshiping Zeus and Apollo. If we had been born Vikings we would be worshiping Wotan and Thor. How does this come about ? Through childhood indoctrination.

Richard Dawkins
Running, Childhood, Parent

Leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods express a preference for "natural" methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

Richard Dawkins
Leader, Population, Followers
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.144, Oxford University Press

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

Richard Dawkins
Death, Spiritual, Religious

The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn't he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured?

Richard Dawkins
Fear, Son, Views