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.

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.

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.

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

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.

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

I do disapprove very strongly of labelling children, especially young children, as something like 'Catholic children' or 'Protestant children' or 'Islamic children.'

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

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

My decision to be a scientist was a bit of a drift really, more or less by default.

Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'.

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.

Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way.

At least the fundamentalists haven't tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.

I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13.

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.

I'm a cultural Christian in the same way many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims.

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.

Physicists are working on the Big Bang, and one day they may or may not solve it.

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

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.

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.

I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine.

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

It's very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.

Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.

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?

We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.