Quotes By 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.

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

I once wrote that anybody who believes the world is only 6,000 years old is either ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.

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?

It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have.

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?

I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.

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.

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

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.

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