Richard Dawkins Quotes

Biography
Type: Scientist
Nationality: English
Born: March 26, 1941


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

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.
Richard Dawkins

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

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
Richard Dawkins

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

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

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.
Richard Dawkins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
Richard Dawkins

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

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.
Richard Dawkins

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