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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 3

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The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.

The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.

Richard Dawkins
Reality, Ideas, Divine

Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

Richard Dawkins
Distance, Science, Vanity
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.58, W. W. Norton & Company

Undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance.

Richard Dawkins
Arrogance, Clarity, Mistaken

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

Richard Dawkins
Funny, Trust, Laughter
"The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

Evolution is fundamentally hostile to religion.

Richard Dawkins
Evolution, Hostile

I shall not make an argument ad hominem. My argument is ad bullshitem.

Richard Dawkins
Argument, Ads

Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth.

Richard Dawkins
Fun, Long, Mythology
"The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True". Book by Richard Dawkins, 2011.

The chicken is only an egg’s way for making another egg.

Richard Dawkins
Eggs, Way, Chickens

Any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, Abuse, Individual
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.140, Oxford University Press

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

Richard Dawkins
Cells, Bacteria, Firsts
"The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

Not only is science corrosive to religion, but religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp.

Richard Dawkins
Real, People, Religion

Human beings are just gene machines.

Richard Dawkins
Machines, Genes, Humans
"Faith and Reason" Interview, www.pbs.org.

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

Richard Dawkins
Faith, Atheist, Thinking
Richard Dawkins' Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival (April 15, 1992); quoted in "EDITORIAL: A scientist's case against God", "The Independent"(London), (p. 17), April 20, 1992.

Being dead will be no different from being unborn -- I shall be just as I was in the time of William the Conqueror or the dinosaurs or the trilobites. There is nothing to fear in that.

Richard Dawkins
Death, Different, Dinosaurs
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.399, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Being an atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily, and fully.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, This Life

Do you really mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward? That's not morality, that's just sucking up.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Trying, Rewards

The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Real, Believe
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.345, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

If God wanted to create life and create humans, it would be slightly odd that he should choose the extraordinarily roundabout way of waiting for 10 billion years before life got started and then waiting for another 4 billion years until you got human beings capable of worshipping and sinning and all the other things religious people are interested in.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Years, People
Source: inters.org

We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, Science, Survival
1976 The Selfish Gene, ch.2.

Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.

Richard Dawkins
Hands, Forever, Survival
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.56, Oxford University Press

If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

Richard Dawkins
If There Is A God, Bigger, Theologian
"God vs. Science". TIME's debate between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins at the Time & Life Building in New York City, content.time.com. November 5, 2006.

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Mind, Vulnerable

The time has come for people of reason to say: Enough is Enough! Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Independent, People
"The root of all evil?". www.smh.com.au. May 21, 2007.

Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it.

Richard Dawkins
Religion, Atheism, Wish

Religion is the root of quite a lot of evil.

Richard Dawkins
Roots, Evil, Religion