Quotes By Richard Dawkins

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

What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

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

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.

I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales.

I mean I think that when you've got a big brain, when you find yourself planted in a world with a brain big enough to understand quite a lot of what you see around you, but not everything, you naturally fall to thinking about the deep mysteries. Where do we come from? Where does the world come from? Where does the universe come from?

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.

I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organised ignorance.

My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side.

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.

Evolution never looks to the future.

The idea of an afterlife where you can be reunited with loved ones can be immensely consoling - though not to me.

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

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.

Something pretty mysterious had to give rise to the origin of the universe.

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.

I suppose if you look back to your early childhood you accept everything people tell you, and that includes a heavy dose of irrationality - you're told about tooth fairies and Father Christmas and things.

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.

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.

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.

At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.

Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree.

We are a very, very unusual species.

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.

Segregation has no place in the education system.

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

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

Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression.

I didn't have a very starry school career, I was medium to above average, nothing special.

I love words.