Richard Dawkins Quotes

But, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.

The universe doesn't owe you a sense of hope

If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine.

Compassionate doctors sometimes lie to patients about the severity of their condition, and it is not always wrong to do so.

Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way.

We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude of size and speed which our bodies operate at. We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms.

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

Effective searching procedures become, when the search-space is sufficiently large, indistinguishable from true creativity.

Evolution is not a genetically controlled distortion of one adult form into another; it is a genetically controlled alteration in a developmental program.

If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.

The truly adult view [...] is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.

Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.

Who are we to say that that was an odd way to do it? I don't think that it is God's purpose to make his intention absolutely obvious to us.

I do like Philip Pullman.And that's an exception because Philip Pullman's books allow magic.

I think Douglas [Adams] is writing with an eye to irony for adults at the same time as entertaining children.

I'm a sucker for nice religious leaders. I fall for it every time.

It would be really worrying if, as a Darwinian, it was impossible to think of ways in which our behavior could be explained.

The whole of technology depends on a scientific background, and of course technology can be used for evil purposes. You can't blame science for that.

If we want to know where the truth lies in particular cases, we have to look.

I've seen [Lalla Ward] episodes of "Doctor Who." They're good, at least partly because the scripts were written by Douglas Adams.

Absolutist morality doesn't have to come from religion but usually does.

If you want to do bad things, science is the most powerful way to do them.

In Britain you don't usually learn about evolution until you are about 15. I should have thought that you should start at about 8. But I could be wrong about that.

I read in the paper today the list of the most popular boys' names in Britain. The first was Jack, the second was Mohammed. That makes me feel a little bit worried.

Public sharing is an important part of science.

Faith is not the opposite of reason.

Evolution may explain some features of the moral law, but it can't explain why it should have any real significance.

If we say that religion is a virus, then why isn't science a virus?

Science is wonderful, science is important, and so are children, so are young people, and so what could be better than to write a science book for young people?

The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain.

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

If saying that religion should be a private matter and should not have special influence in public life is illiberal, then 74% of U.K. Christians are illiberal, too.

All animals are minor variations on a very particular theme.

If you divide Christians into denominations, agnostics and atheists come in third, behind Catholics and Baptists. That's interesting when you contrast it with the lack of influence of nonbelievers.

I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.

If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.

The idea of tiny changes cumulated over many steps is an immensely powerful idea, capable of explaining an enormous range of things that would be otherwise inexplicable.

Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes, we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

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

Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society.

I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content.

[Invading Iraq] will unite the entire Arab world against the West.

I don't feel depressed. I feel elated.

Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature.

Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything.

However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747

In the beginning was simplicity.

You can't imagine how gratifying it is to have a reader come up to you and say, 'You changed my life.'

Writing a computer virus program is child's play. Any fool can do it, which is why the silly little twerps who do have nothing to be proud of.