Quotes By Richard Dawkins

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I love words.

Science coverage could be improved by the recognition that science is timeless, and therefore science stories should not need to be pegged to an item in the news.

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

I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.

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.

I love romantic poetry.

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

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

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

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

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

Of course in science there are things that are open to doubt and things need to be discussed. But among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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