Richard Dawkins Quotes

There is great variation in brain power all the way from Einstien on one hand to Sarah Palin on the other.

My computer is a very complex gadget and it was designed by many designers, so why must the universe have only a single designer and not many designers?

[If] there is mercy in nature, it is accidental. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.

The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.

I great difficulty having any respect for a religion that has so little confidence in the truth of its beliefs that it feels reduced to using threats in order to propagate those beliefs.

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

The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion.

I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.

Discrimination is not liberal. Arguing against discrimination is not intolerance.

I don't understand why so many people who are sophisticated in science go on believing in God. I wish I did.

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.

When I am dying, I should like my life taken out under general anaesthetic, exactly as if it were a diseased appendix.

Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false.

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

I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.

I'm pretty sure there is some genetic component towards intelligence.

I can remember at the age of about six being fascinated by the planets and learning all about Mars and Venus and things.

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

Darwin gives courage to the rest of science that we shall end up understanding literally everything, springing from almost nothing - a thought extremely hard to comprehend and believe.

All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.

I do think imagination is enormously valuable, and that children should be encouraged in their imagination. That's very true.

Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.

Segregation has no place in the education system.

I love romantic poetry.

'Take offense at the drop of a hat' is the unwritten eleventh commandment.

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.

Beliefs. Once entrenched in a culture, they persist, evolve and diverge, in a manner reminiscent of biological evolution.

Yesterday's dangerous idea is today's orthodoxy and tomorrow's cliché.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

We have to find our own purposes in life, which are not derived directly from our scientific history.

American political opportunities are loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.

Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.

I think the world's always a better place if people are filled with understanding.

I've never heard of William Craig. A debate with him might look good on his resume, but it wouldn't look good on mine!

What really happens is that the gene pool becomes filled with genes that influence bodies in such a way that they behave 'as if' they made complex, if unconscious, cost/benefit calculations

The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors.

I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed.

The river of my title is a river of DNA, a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues

No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch.

I think what attracts me about the Electric Monk is that it's such an eloquent example of the futility of belief for belief's sake. I mean there's only any point in believing something if it's true.

At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.

People like to trace their ancestry.

I'm not much given to straight, irony-free hero-worship.

It is all too easy to mistake passion that can change its mind for fundamentalism, which never will.

Evolution normally does not come to a halt, but constantly 'tracks' the changing environment.

Have they discovered evolution yet?

... you need more than luck to navigate successfully through a thousand sieves in succession.

The Universe does not owe us meaning.

We should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics.

If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining.