Richard Dawkins – 38 Quotes

38 Quotes by Richard Dawkins

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

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

The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.

– Richard Dawkins

Science coverage could be improved by the recognition that science is timeless, and therefore science stories should not need to be pegged to an item in the news.

– Richard Dawkins

Of course in science there are things that are open to doubt and things need to be discussed. But among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know.

– Richard Dawkins

It has become almost a cliche 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

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

Isn’t it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?

– Richard Dawkins

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

– Richard Dawkins

It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have.

– Richard Dawkins

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

– Richard Dawkins

One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.

– Richard Dawkins

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.

– Richard Dawkins

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

– Richard Dawkins

I love romantic poetry.

– Richard Dawkins

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

Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ’s followers seem to disagree.

– Richard Dawkins

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

– Richard Dawkins

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

– Richard Dawkins

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

– Richard Dawkins

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

– Richard Dawkins

The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.

– Richard Dawkins

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

– Richard Dawkins

Evolution never looks to the future.

– Richard Dawkins

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

– Richard Dawkins

At least the fundamentalists haven’t tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.

– Richard Dawkins

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

– Richard Dawkins

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

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

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

– Richard Dawkins

Segregation has no place in the education system.

– Richard Dawkins

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

– Richard Dawkins

Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.

– Richard Dawkins

I suppose if you look back to your early childhood you accept everything people tell you, and that includes a heavy dose of irrationality – you’re told about tooth fairies and Father Christmas and things.

– Richard Dawkins

Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that’s because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.

– Richard Dawkins

When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn’t put too much emphasis on the word ‘just.’ There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.

– Richard Dawkins

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

– Richard Dawkins

Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.

– Richard Dawkins