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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 28

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I'm fond of science fiction. But not all science fiction. I like science fiction where there's a scientific lesson, for example - when the science fiction book changes one thing but leaves the rest of science intact and

I'm fond of science fiction. But not all science fiction. I like science fiction where there's a scientific lesson, for example - when the science fiction book changes one thing but leaves the rest of science intact and explores the consequences of that. That's actually very valuable.

Richard Dawkins
Book, Example, Fiction
"Richard Dawkins Keeps Making New Enemies". Interview with Isaac Chotiner, newrepublic.com. October 29, 2013.

Time and again, my sociobiological colleagues have upbraided me as a turncoat, because I will not agree with them that the ultimate criterion for the success of a meme must be its contribution to Darwinian "fitness". At bottom, they insist, a "good meme" spreads because brains are receptive to it, and the receptiveness of brains is ultimately shaped by (genetic) natural selection.

Richard Dawkins
Brain, Natural, Criteria
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene”, p.167, Oxford University Press

I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Childhood, Stories

I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13.

Richard Dawkins
Birthday, School, Age

However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747

Richard Dawkins
Boeing, Designer, Entity
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.138, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I was brought up in a family which valued natural history. Both my parents knew the names of all the British wildflowers, so as we went walking the country, I was constantly being exposed to a natural history sort of knowledge.

Richard Dawkins
Country, Names, Parent

I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.

Richard Dawkins
Christian, Want, Our Society
"Dawkins: I'm a Cultural Christian". news.bbc.co.uk. December 10, 2007.

I love romantic poetry.

Richard Dawkins
Romantic Love, Romantic Poetry
"Darwin's child" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. February 10, 2003.

Reductionism is a dirty word, and a kind of 'holistier than thou' self-righteousness has become fashionable.

Richard Dawkins
Dirty, Self, Kind
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene”, p.172, Oxford University Press

Luke [the gospel writer] screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius - a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole - but it happened too late in 6 AD, long after Herod's death.

Richard Dawkins
Dating, Long, Religion

Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes, we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

Richard Dawkins
Book, Purpose, Use
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content.

Richard Dawkins
Book, Loss, Atheism

If you are religious at all, it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false (knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan), you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Thinking, Opposites
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.25, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.

Richard Dawkins
Music, Moving, Doubt
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

That there is a continuous link from humans to gorillas, with the intermediate species merely long dead, is beyond the understanding of speciesists. Tie the label Homo sapiens even to a tiny piece of insensible embryonic tissue, and its life suddenly leaps to infinite, incomputable value.... Self-styled pro-lifers, and others that indulge in footling debates about exactly when in its development a foetus becomes human, exhibit the same discontinuous mentality. Human, to the discontinuous mind, is an absolutist concept. There can be no half measures. And from this flows much evil.

Richard Dawkins
Self, Indulge In, Ties

Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive to religious people, I'll be universally censured, including by many atheists.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Atheist, People

Science boosts its claim to truth by its spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and to predict what will happen and when.

Richard Dawkins
Atheism, Energy, Matter
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I became a little alarmed at the number of my readers who took the meme more positively as a theory of human culture in its own right - either to criticize it (unfairly, given my original modest intention) or to carry it far beyond the limits of what I then thought justified. This was why I may have seemed to backtrack.

Richard Dawkins
Numbers, Atheism, Culture
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.127, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society.

Richard Dawkins
Opposites, Walks, Settings
"Eden and Evolution". Interview with Shankar Vedantam, www.washingtonpost.com. February 5, 2006.

The idea of tiny changes cumulated over many steps is an immensely powerful idea, capable of explaining an enormous range of things that would be otherwise inexplicable.

Richard Dawkins
Powerful, Ideas, Tiny
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.95, W. W. Norton & Company

The alternative which I favor is to renounce all euphemisms and grasp the nettle of the word atheism itself, precisely because it is a taboo word carrying frissons of hysterical phobia. Critical mass may be harder to achieve than with some non-confrontational euphemism, but if we did achieve it with the dread word atheist, the political impact would be all the greater.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Impact, Political

Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some alternative sense. If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will eventually bring it through with flying colours. Many candidates for recognition as orthodox medicines fail the test and are summarily dropped. The alternative label should not (though, alas, it does) provide immunity from the same fate.

Richard Dawkins
Fate, Medicine, Flying

I am an enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Genes, Bigs
Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition”, p.191, OUP Oxford

We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe.

Richard Dawkins
Animal, Complicated, Known
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope to eventually understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.

Richard Dawkins
Lying, Rainbow, World
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.35, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt