Richard Dawkins Quotes

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

Funny, Means, Brains

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

Faith, Great, Belief

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, Gods, Societies

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

Religion, Against, Satisfied

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

Respect, May, Agnostic

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

Sad, Thought, Why

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

Faith, Simple, Blind

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

Science, Ignorance, Become

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Richard Dawkins

Selfish, Try, Born

A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.
Richard Dawkins

Lack, Delusion, Evidence

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

Religion, Wrong, Satisfied

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.
Richard Dawkins

Life, Essence, Colossal

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

Religion, God, Different

The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.
Richard Dawkins

Small, Die, Sun

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

Technology, Important, Deep

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, Thought, Might

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

Religion, Time, Power

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

Faith, Work, Children

Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.
Richard Dawkins

Today, Doubt, Sun

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

Computers, Forward, Winning

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

Time, Half, Ancestors

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

Good, Design, Evil

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

Poetry, Reality, Culture

My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.
Richard Dawkins

Feeling, Personal, Evolution

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

Love, Peace, Nothing

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Biography

Nationality: English

Type: Scientist

Born: March 26, 1941

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