Quotes By Richard Dawkins

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.

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 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.

Segregation has no place in the education system.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 love romantic poetry.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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

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

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