Quotes By Richard Dawkins

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?

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

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.

Natural selection is anything but random.

I have often said that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist.

I don't feel depressed. I feel elated.

The universe doesn't owe us condolence or consolation; it doesn't owe us a nice warm feeling inside.

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

My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.

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

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.

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.