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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 27

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Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.

Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Believe, School

The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened

Richard Dawkins
Important, Remember, Mathematics
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.75, W. W. Norton & Company

If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.

Richard Dawkins
Machines, Remember, Computer
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.59, W. W. Norton & Company

I'm pretty sure there is some genetic component towards intelligence.

Richard Dawkins
Components

Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivasection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! The only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.

Richard Dawkins
Christian, Attitude, Intelligent
"The Blind Watchmaker". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1986.

In the beginning was simplicity.

Richard Dawkins
Simplicity
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.34, Oxford University Press

Bereavement is terrible, of course. And when somebody you love dies, it's a time for reflection, a time for memory, a time for regret.

Richard Dawkins
Memories, Regret, Grief
"Dawkins: Evolution Is ‘Not A Controversial Issue’". CNN Interview, link.kplr11.com. September 7, 2012.

Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything.

Richard Dawkins
Roots, Evil, One Thing
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The cynic about human nature might say that religious morality is an effective way of keeping people in line. The threat of hell, the reward of heaven, but the rules of the holy books are out of date and often barbaric.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Book, People

I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Magic, Fairy Tale

If you were to actually travel around schools and universities and listen in on lectures about evolution you might find a fairly substantial fraction of young people, without knowing what it is they disapprove of, think they disapprove of it, because they've been brought up to.

Richard Dawkins
School, Thinking, Knowing
"People say I'm strident". Interview with Decca Aitkenhead, www.theguardian.com. October 24, 2008.

The obvious objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces.

Richard Dawkins
Hussein, Occupation, Execution
"Executing Saddam Hussein was an Act of Vandalism" by Richard Dawkins, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 3, 2007.

Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own. Once this new evolution begins, it will in no necessary sense be subservient to the old.

Richard Dawkins
Evolution, Kind, Arise
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene”, p.251, Oxford University Press

They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

Richard Dawkins
Names, Long, Survival
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.41, Oxford University Press

[The Internet] is by far the most important innovation in the media in my lifetime. It's like having a huge encyclopedia permanently available. There's a tremendous amount of rubbish on the world wide web, but retrieval of what you want to so rapid that it doesn't really matter

Richard Dawkins
Media, Innovation, Important

You can't imagine how gratifying it is to have a reader come up to you and say, 'You changed my life.'

Richard Dawkins
Up To You, Imagine, You Changed

My decision to be a scientist was a bit of a drift really, more or less by default.

Richard Dawkins
Decision, Scientist, Default

I don't feel depressed. I feel elated.

Richard Dawkins
Feels

Science may be weird and incomprehensible--more weird and less comprehensible than any theology--but science works. It gets results. It can fly you to Saturn, slingshotting you around Venus and Jupiter on the way. We may not understand quantum theory (heaven knows, I don't), but a theory that predicts the real world to ten decimal places cannot in any straightforward sense be wrong.

Richard Dawkins
Real, Heaven, Jupiter

The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as 'faith'.

Richard Dawkins
Doctors, Belief, Patient
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.138, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.

Richard Dawkins
Technology, Space, Brain
Richard Dawkins (1995). “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life”, Basic Books (AZ)

Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.

Richard Dawkins
Design, Vengeance, Vicious
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.146, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one. I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Design, Waiting
"The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design". Book by Richard Dawkins, September 28, 2015.

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution.

Richard Dawkins
Religion, Atheism, Morality
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene”, p.3, Oxford University Press

Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Atheism, Orbit