Richard Dawkins Quotes And Sayings

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.

It Is A Lamentable Observation That Because Of The Way Our Laws Are Skewed Toward The Plaintiff, London Has Become The Libel Capital Of The World.

It Is Possible In Medicine, Even When You Intend To Do Good, To Do Harm Instead. That Is Why Science Thrives On Actively Encouraging Criticism Rather Than Stifling It.

It Doesn't Hurt My Feeling When I Get Vilified By Fundamentalist Religious People. I've Actually Made Comedy Out Of It. I've Made Light Of That.

I Don't Do Formal Debates, Because Formal Debates Where You Have Two People Up On A Stage In Equal Status, And Each Of Them Is Given 20 Minutes To Give Their Point Of View, And Then 10 Minutes For A Rebuttal, Or Whatever, That Creates The Illusion That You Really Do Have Here Two Equal Points Of View Of Equal Scientific Standing.

What Is Illiberal Is Not Persuasion But Imposition Of One's Views.

I Love Romantic Poetry.

Why Are We So Obsessed With Monogamous Fidelity?

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.

I Was Confirmed At My Prep School At The Age Of 13.

I'm A Cultural Christian In The Same Way Many Of My Friends Call Themselves Cultural Jews Or Cultural Muslims.

My Interest In Biology Was Pretty Much Always On The Philosophical Side.

At The Deepest Level, All Living Things That Have Ever Been Looked At Have The Same Dna Code. And Many Of The Same Genes.

When I Say That Human Beings Are Just Gene Machines, One Shouldn't Put Too Much Emphasis On The Word 'Just.' There Is A Very Great Deal Of Complication, And Indeed Beauty In Being A Gene Machine.

I Didn't Have A Very Starry School Career, I Was Medium To Above Average, Nothing Special.

I Have Often Said That I Am A Passionate Darwinian When It Comes To Explaining Why We Exist.

Science Coverage Could Be Improved By The Recognition That Science Is Timeless, And Therefore Science Stories Should Not Need To Be Pegged To An Item In The News.

I Want Very Much To Communicate Science To As Wide An Audience As Possible, But Not At A Cost Of Dumbing Down, And Not At A Cost In Getting Things Right.

I Suppose I'm A Cultural Anglican, And I See Evensong In A Country Church Through Much The Same Eyes As I See A Village Cricket Match On The Village Green. I Have A Certain Love For It.

My Eyes Are Constantly Wide Open To The Extraordinary Fact Of Existence. Not Just Human Existence, But The Existence Of Life And How This Breathtakingly Powerful Process, Which Is Natural Selection, Has Managed To Take The Very Simple Facts Of Physics And Chemistry And Build Them Up To Redwood Trees And Humans.

There's A Mystical Strain In Every Country, And Eclipses Are Likely To Bring That Out.

We Have The Power To Turn Against Our Creators.

The Whole Idea Of Creating Saints, It's Pure 'Monty Python.' They Have To Clock Up Two Miracles.

I Think I Would Abolish Schools Which Systematically Inculcate Sectarian Beliefs.

I Was Brought Up In A Family Which Valued Natural History. Both My Parents Knew The Names Of All The British Wildflowers, So As We Went Walking The Country, I Was Constantly Being Exposed To A Natural History Sort Of Knowledge.

In Britain, Christianity Is Dying. Islam, Unfortunately, Isn't.

I Get The Feeling More And More That Religion Is Being Left Behind.

Notoriously, The United States Is The Most Religious Of The Western Advanced Nations. It's A Bit Mysterious Why That Is.

People Really, Really Hate Their Religion Being Criticized. It's As Though You've Said They Had An Ugly Face; They Seem To Identify Personally With It.

There Are Many Very Educated People Who Are Religious, But They're Not Creationists.

I've Always Been Very Suspicious Of The Left-right Dimension In Politics.

Selfish Genes Actually Explain Altruistic Individuals, And To Me That's Crystal-clear.

I Did A Film That's On Youtube Of Me Reading Hate Mail With A Woman Playing The Cello In The Background.

I'm Afraid The Internet Is Filled With People Using Really Very Intemperate Language.

If Bush And Blair Are Eventually Put On Trial For War Crimes, I Shall Not Be Among Those Pressing For Them To Be Hanged.

The Feminists Taught Us About Consciousness-raising.

The Population Of The U.s. Is Nearly 300 Million, Including Many Of The Best Educated, Most Talented, Most Resourceful, Humane People On Earth. By Almost Any Measure Of Civilised Attainment, From Nobel Prize-counts On Down, The U.s. Leads The World By Miles.

Either Jesus Had A Father, Or He Didn't. The Question Is A Scientific One, And Scientific Evidence, If Any Were Available, Would Be Used To Settle It.

A Triumph Of Consciousness-raising Has Been The Homosexual Hijacking Of The Word 'Gay.'

My Thoughts, My Beliefs, My Feelings Are All In My Brain. My Brain Is Going To Rot.

Once A Viral Program Gets Started, There Is Nothing To Stop It.

George Bush Is A Catastrophe For The World. And A Dream For Bin Laden.

In The 1920s And 1930s, Scientists From Both The Political Left And Right Would Not Have Found The Idea Of Designer Babies Particularly Dangerous - Though, Of Course, They Would Not Have Used That Phrase.

The History Of Science Has Been One Long Series Of Violent Brainstorms, As Successive Generations Have Come To Terms With Increasing Levels Of Queerness In The Universe.

There Are Many Religious Points Of View Where The Conservation Of The World Is Just As Important As It Is To Scientists.

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.

I Think A Fundamentalist Is Somebody Who Believes Something Unshakably And Isn't Going To Change Their Mind.

I Was Never Much Bothered About Moral Questions Like, 'How Could There Be A Good God When There's So Much Evil In The World?'

To Put It Bluntly, American Political Opportunities Are Heavily Loaded Against Those Who Are Simultaneously Intelligent And Honest.

The State Of Israel Seems To Owe Its Very Existence To The American Jewish Vote, While At The Same Time Consigning The Non-religious To Political Oblivion.