Richard Dawkins Quotes

Even those who do not, or cannot, avail themselves of a scientific education, choose to benefit from the technology that is made possible by the scientific education of others.

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.

What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading.

What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?

I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.

If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle.

Along with William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin is Britain's greatest gift to the world. He was our greatest thinker.

A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.

Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. The watchmaker is blind

If circumcision has any justification AT ALL, it should be medical only. Parents' religion is the worst of all reasons - pure child abuse.

My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about.

There is a tendency for people to say evolution is only a theory. That is inappropriate.

[It] is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.

I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.

Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.

The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance. Superficially, the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent Designer.

I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion.

My thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings are all in my brain. My brain is going to rot.

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

We should take astrology seriously. No, I don't mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humouring it as a piece of harmless fun.

Natural selection is all about the differential success of rival DNA in getting itself transmitted vertically in the species archives.

If you look up at the Milky Way through the eyes of Carl Sagan, you get a feeling in your chest of something greater than yourself. And it is. But it's not supernatural.

There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents.

I don't shout people down. I argue people down, perhaps.

I really, really would like to see religion go away altogether.

Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself.

You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.

In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.

Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.

It is a remarkable coincidence that almost everyone has the same religion as their parents and it always just so happens they're the right religion.

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose

Evolution never looks to the future.

I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine.

Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.

Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.

The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don't.

I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.

I once wrote that anybody who believes the world is only 6,000 years old is either ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.

My passion is for scientific truth. I don't much care about good and evil. ... I care about what's true.

It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests.

I don't think God is an explanation at all. It's simply redescribing the problem.

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

Ideally, I'd like everybody to be secular.

The book is true, and if evidence seems to condtradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out not the book.

The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans.

Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression.

Religious organisations have an automatic tax-free charitable status.

All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.

[Jay] Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life.

All qualified physicists, biologists, cosmologists and geologists agree, on the basis of massive, mutually corroborating evidence, that the earth's age is at least four billion years.