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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 26

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I think that there are good things that happen and bad things that happen.

I think that there are good things that happen and bad things that happen.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Good Things, Happens
Source: inters.org

Darwin gives courage to the rest of science that we shall end up understanding literally everything, springing from almost nothing - a thought extremely hard to comprehend and believe.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Giving, Understanding

Religions are not imaginative, not poetic, not soulful. On the contrary, they are parochial, small-minded, niggardly with the human imagination, precisely where science is generous.

Richard Dawkins
Imagination, Religion, Poetic

The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of explaining life.

Richard Dawkins
Society, Principles, Theory
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.272, W. W. Norton & Company

Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.

Richard Dawkins
Animal, Fossils, Found
Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.283, Simon and Schuster

I do think the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of the mind which has a particular epidemiology similar to that of a virus... Religion is a terrific meme. That's right. But that doesn't make it true and I care about what's true. Smallpox virus is a terrific virus. It does its job magnificently well. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing. It doesn't mean that I don't want to see it stamped out.

Richard Dawkins
Jobs, Mean, Thinking

I like to think 'The God Delusion' is a humorous book. I think, actually, it's full of laughs. And people who describe it as a polarizing book or as an aggressive book, it's just that very often they haven't read it.

Richard Dawkins
Humorous, Book, Thinking

Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don't know it.

Richard Dawkins
Life, Education, Believe

Just because science can't in practice explain things like the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet, that doesn't mean that religion can. It's a simple and logical fallacy to say, "If science can't do something therefore religion can.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Writing, Simple
"Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". "Science Show" with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Evolution, Biology

Suppose that there's a gene that makes you gay if you were bottle-fed but that has some completely different effect if you were breast-fed. So in the days before bottles were invented that gene would not have manifested itself as gay behavior, but now that bottles are common it can do so.

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

Matthew and Luke handle the problem differently, by deciding that Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem after all. But they get him there by different routes.

Richard Dawkins
Jesus, Religion, Different
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.118, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There is something so mysterious that it is almost like God. God is in the equations. God is in the fundamental constants. And that's fine. I mean, that's just redefinition of that which we find mysterious at the basis of the universe.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Fundamentals, Mysterious
"Faith and Reason" Interview, www.pbs.org.

If I were God wanting to make a human being, I would do it by a more direct way rather than by evolution. Why deliberately set it up in the one way which makes it look as though you don't exist?

Richard Dawkins
Looks, Way, Evolution
"Faith and Reason" Interview, www.pbs.org.

I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organised ignorance.

Richard Dawkins
Ignorance, Scientist, Enough

This person should have been aborted years ago.

Richard Dawkins
Should Have, Years, Persons
Twitter post from Aug 20, 2014

The present Luddism over genetic engineering may die a natural death as the computer-illiterate generation is superseded.... I fear that, if the green movement's high-amplitude warnings over GMOs turn out to be empty, people will be dangerously disinclined to listen to other and more serious warnings.

Richard Dawkins
Engineering, Gmos, People
Richard Dawkins (2010). “A Devil's Chaplain: Selected Writings”, p.20, Hachette UK

The genetic code is not a binary code as in computers, nor an eight-level code as in some telephone systems, but a quaternary code with four symbols. The machine code of the genes is uncannily computerlike.

Richard Dawkins
Eight, Machines, Levels
Richard Dawkins (1995). “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life”, Basic Books (AZ)

I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous ideas.

Richard Dawkins
Ideas, Too Much, Ridiculous
YouTube Channel " Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science"/"Richard Dawkins and his Foundation at the Reason Rally", www.youtube.com. April 07, 2012.

We don't need fossils - the case for evolution is watertight without them; so it is paradoxical to use gaps in the fossil record as though they were evidence against evolution

Richard Dawkins
Needs, Use, Records
Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.146, Simon and Schuster

Textbooks describe DNA as a blueprint for a body. It's better seen as a recipe for making a body, because it is irreversible. But today I want to present it as something different again, and even more intriguing. The DNA in you is a coded description of ancient worlds in which your ancestors lived. DNA is the wisdom out of the old days, and I mean very old days indeed.

Richard Dawkins
Wisdom, Mean, Dna

I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.

Richard Dawkins
People, Childhood, Magic

We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes - the gibbons and orangutans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans but excludes humans.

Richard Dawkins
Apes, Asian, Orangutans
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2003, p. 22,

Ironically, I originally wrote the tweet with Jews and thought, That might give offense. And so I thought I better change it.

Richard Dawkins
Giving, Might, Tweet
Source: newrepublic.com

If the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies ... are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention ... The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, Evil, Design