Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins FRS FRSLis an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 March 1941
CityNairobi, Kenya
Richard Dawkins quotes about
thinking ideas giving
Some physicists solve that problem of the necessity of finely tuned physical constants ... by invoking the anthropic principle, saying, well, here we are, we exist, we have to be in the kind of universe capable of giving rise to us. That in itself is, I think, unsatisfying, and as John Lennox rightly says, some physicists solve that by the multiverse idea-the idea that our universe is just one of many universes.
islam mein-kampf nazism
Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about Nazism.
people wish passionate
I am passionate about truth and passionate about clarity, and I don't regard myself as particularly militant or aggressive. I simply wish to discuss what is true and to listen to evidence and put evidence forward to other people and have a sensible, sane, moderated argument.
selfish mean science
Scientific and technological progress themselves are value-neutral. They are just very good at doing what they do. If you want to do selfish, greedy, intolerant and violent things, scientific technology will provide you with by far the most efficient way of doing so. But if you want to do good, to solve the world's problems, to progress in the best value-laden sense, once again, there is no better means to those ends than the scientific way.
thinking giving heaven
One of the possible reasons why we might be good is that we're frightened, frightened of God. We want the reward in Heaven, we don't want to go to Hell. That would be an ignoble, ignominious reason for being good, and I think that if anybody was good to you just because they hoped for a heavenly reward, you wouldn't respect them, you'd probably give them a wide berth.
enjoy
We have this one life, let's enjoy it, let's live it to the full and don't get so worked up about don't identify yourself so passionately with this business called religion.
hands brain way
There is great variation in brain power all the way from Einstien on one hand to Sarah Palin on the other.
children rights parent
I guess there are some rights of parents with what they choose their children to learn, but I'm biased in favor of freeing children to learn and not letting parents be too doctrinaire in indoctrinating their children.
facts doe belief
The fact that somebody does good doesn't make their beliefs true.
moving world familiar
Commonsense lets us down, because commonsense evolved in a world where nothing moves very fast, and nothing is very small or very large; the mundane world of the familiar.
people passionate doe
I find that religion really does motivate people to do horrible things because they have this passionate faith in whatever their religion happens to be, and it teaches them that the other religion is the wrong one.
children important trying
It's very important to try to inculcate into children moral rules, such as "do as you would be done by."
children people going-away
I'd like everybody to be secular. I suppose I have to say politically I would like religion to become gentler and nicer and to stop interfering with other people's lives, stop repressing women, stop indoctrinating children, all that sort of thing. But I really, really would like to see religion go away altogether.
arguing discrimination intolerance
Discrimination is not liberal. Arguing against discrimination is not intolerance.