Quotes By Richard Dawkins

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.

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.

I love romantic poetry.

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.

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.

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.

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?