Richard Dawkins Quotes And Sayings

I Love Words.

I Once Wrote That Anybody Who Believes The World Is Only 6,000 Years Old Is Either Ignorant, Stupid, Insane Or Wicked.

Complex, Statistically Improbable Things Are By Their Nature More Difficult To Explain Than Simple, Statistically Probable Things.

We Frequently Look Into The Future Of Mankind And See Dangers. We See If We Carry On Doing What We Are Doing In 20 Years' Time There Will Be No Rainforests Left, Just To Use One Example. Looking Into The Future May Be One Of The Reasons That Brains Evolved In The First Place.

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.

We Are A Very, Very Unusual Species.

It Would Be Intolerant If I Advocated The Banning Of Religion, But Of Course I Never Have.

I Am Very Comfortable With The Idea That We Can Override Biology With Free Will.

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.

I Think Looking Back To My Own Childhood, The Fact That So Many Of The Stories I Read Allowed The Possibility Of Frogs Turning Into Princes, Whether That Has A Sort Of Insidious Affect On Rationality, I'm Not Sure. Perhaps It's Something For Research.

I Don't Feel Depressed. I Feel Elated.

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.

Metaphors Are Fine If They Aid Understanding, But Sometimes They Get In The Way.

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.

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.

Evolution Never Looks To The Future.

At Least The Fundamentalists Haven't Tried To Dilute Their Message. Their Faith Is Exposed For What It Is For All To See.

Segregation Has No Place In The Education System.

I'm Not One Of Those Who Wants To Purge Our Society Of Our Christian History.

Scientists Disagree Among Themselves But They Never Fight Over Their Disagreements. They Argue About Evidence Or Go Out And Seek New Evidence. Much The Same Is True Of Philosophers, Historians And Literary Critics.

People Say I'm Shrill And Strident.

Something Pretty Mysterious Had To Give Rise To The Origin Of The Universe.

I Think There Is A Sort Of Box-ticking Mentality. Not Just In The Teaching Profession. You Hear About It In Medicine And Nursing. It's A Lawyer-driven Insistence On Meeting Prescribed Standards Rather Than Just Being A Good Doctor.

I Certainly Would Absolutely Never Do What Some Of My American Colleagues Do And Object To Religious Symbols Being Used, Putting Crosses Up In The Public Square And Things Like That. I Don't Fret About That At All; I'm Quite Happy About That.

I Did Not End Up As Broadly Educated As My Cambridge Colleagues, But I Graduated Probably Better Equipped To Write A Book On My Chosen Subject.

What Matters Is Not The Facts But How You Discover And Think About Them.

We Cannot, Of Course, Disprove God, Just As We Can't Disprove Thor, Fairies, Leprechauns And The Flying Spaghetti Monster.

It Is Immoral To Brand Children With Religion. 'This Is A Catholic Child.' 'That Is A Muslim Child.' I Want Everyone To Flinch When They Hear Such A Phrase, Just As They Would If They Heard, 'That Is A Marxist Child.'

When The Ancestors Of The Cheetah First Began Pursuing The Ancestors Of The Gazelle, Neither Of Them Could Run As Fast As They Can Today.

Why Did Humans Lose Their Body Hair? Why Did They Start Walking On Their Hind Legs? Why Did They Develop Big Brains? I Think That The Answer To All Three Questions Is Sexual Selection.

There's Clearly A Lot Of Ludditism, And You See It In All The Hysteria About Every Scientific Story.

I Do Feel Visceral Revulsion At The Burka Because For Me It Is A Symbol Of The Oppression Of Women.

As A Liberal, I Would Hesitate To Propose A Blanket Ban On Any Style Of Dress Because Of The Implications For Individual Liberty And Freedom Of Choice.

I Wouldn't Want To Have The Thought Police Going To People's Homes, Dictating What They Teach Their Children. I Don't Want To Be Big Brotherish. I Would Hate That.

The Very Large Brain That Humans Have, Plus The Things That Go Along With It - Language, Art, Science - Seemed To Have Evolved Only Once. The Eye, By Contrast, Independently Evolved 40 Times. So, If You Were To 'Replay' Evolution, The Eye Would Almost Certainly Appear Again, Whereas The Big Brain Probably Wouldn't.

Bishops Sit In The House Of Lords Automatically.

Religious Organisations Have An Automatic Tax-free Charitable Status.

The Solution Often Turns Out More Beautiful Than The Puzzle.

Of Course You Can Use The Products Of Science To Do Bad Things, But You Can Use Them To Do Good Things, Too.

Mystics Exult In Mystery And Want It To Stay Mysterious. Scientists Exult In Mystery For A Different Reason: It Gives Them Something To Do.

I'm Not A Good Observer. I'm Not Proud Of It.

I Am Very Conscious That You Can't Condemn People Of An Earlier Era By The Standards Of Ours.

If I Say That I Am More Interested In Preventing The Slaughter Of Large Whales Than I Am In Improving Housing Conditions For People, I Am Likely To Shock Some Of My Friends.

The World Is Well Supplied With Spiders Whose Male Ancestors Died After Mating. The World Is Bereft Of Spiders Whose Would-be Ancestors Never Mated In The First Place.

The Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus Has Shown Great Courage, In The Face Of Spiteful Vested Interests, In Demonstrating How Easy It Is For People To Concoct Memories That Are Entirely False But Which Seem, To The Victim, Every Bit As Real As True Memories.

A Native Speaker Of English Who Has Never Read A Word Of The King James Bible Is Verging On The Barbarian.

We Should Not Live By Darwinian Principles. But Darwin Explains How We Got Here.

You Can't Understand European History At All Other Than Through Religion, Or English Literature Either If You Can't Recognise Biblical Allusions.

Just As I Wouldn't Expect A Gynecologist To Have A Debate With Somebody Who Believes In The Stork-theory Of Reproduction, I Won't Do Debates With Young Earth Creationists.

I Think That People In The Bible Belt Are Far Less Monolithically Religious Than Many People Imagine. There Are Lots And Lots Of People Who Are Free-thinking, Secularists, Or Atheists In The So-called Bible Belt.