Richard Dawkins Quotes
Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.
The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened
God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.
Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.
People really, really hate their religion being criticized. It's as though you've said they had an ugly face; they seem to identify personally with it.
DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
I do sometimes accuse people of ignorance, but that is not intended to be an insult. I'm ignorant of lots of things. Ignorance is something that can be remedied by education.
There is enough information capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it, three or four times over.
It is possible in medicine, even when you intend to do good, to do harm instead. That is why science thrives on actively encouraging criticism rather than stifling it.
I'm not so fond of the sort of science fiction that isn't really science fiction but is sometimes thought to be - Gothic princesses and white horses and bats and castles and things.
There is another kind of altruism that seems to go beyond that, a kind of super-altruism, which humans appear to have. And I think that does need a Darwinian explanation.
There is an attitude in the culture that says that everybody is entitled to their opinion. You got to respect their opinion. No, you damn well haven't got to respect their opinion.
I've been reading an Alabama newspaper that one man shot another man because he beat him in a Bible-quoting competition.
DNA is ROM. It can be read millions of times over, but only written to once - when it is first assembled the birth of the cell in which it resides.
I am not absolutely positive there is no god. Only in the sense that I'm not absolutely positive there is no large china teapot in orbit in the solar system.
You can never be absolutely certain that anything doesn't exist. But you can show that it's unlikely.
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.
Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.
I think we certainly benefit from social institutions which encourage us towards moral behavior. It's very important to have law. It's very important to have a moral education.
The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist.
When I sign books, I get lines of people and what they usually say is: "Thank you. You have changed my life." I am really moved by that.
To invoke the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing - for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.
People who criticize The Selfish Gene like that often haven't read it. The selfish gene accounts for altruism toward kin and individuals who might be in a position to reciprocate your altruism.
There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting... But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.
If it is solely an evolutionary convenience, there is really no such thing as good or evil.
Some people find clarity threatening. They like muddle, confusion, obscurity. So when somebody does no more than speak clearly it sounds threatening.
Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening.
It's an important point to realize that the genetic programming of our lives is not fully deterministic. It is statistical - it is in any animal merely statistical - not deterministic.
You contain a trillion copies of a large, textual document written in a highly accurate, digital code, each copy as voluminous as a substantial book. I'm talking, of course, of the DNA in your cells.
Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'.
Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.
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.
I am persuaded that 'child abuse' is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like...eternal hell.
Any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it.
