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
cancer weather space
Don't ask God to cure cancer and world poverty. He's too busy finding you a parking space and fixing the weather for your barbecue.
technology space brain
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.
animal space survival
Five per cent vision is better than no vision at all. Five per cent hearing is better than no hearing at all. Five per cent flight efficiency is better than no flight at all. It is thoroughly believable that every organ or apparatus that we actually see is the product of a smooth trajectory through animal space, a trajectory in which every intermediate stage assisted survival and reproduction.
space islands religion
The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.
thoughtful matter born
How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.
rip successful catholic
The Roman Catholic Church is an institution for whose gains the phrase "ill-gotten" might have been specially invented. And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history, the medieval equivalent of the Nigerian Internet scam but far more successful.
academic difficulty fill intrinsic law simplicity states subject vacuum
Dawkins Law of the Conservation of Difficulty states that obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity
conversation sure
I'm not sure this conversation can go any further.
children silly writing
Writing a computer virus program is child's play. Any fool can do it, which is why the silly little twerps who do have nothing to be proud of.
suicide children thinking
If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.
suicide presidential political
It is universally accepted that an admission of atheism would be instant political suicide for any (U.S.) presidential candidate.
anything-and-everything attacking particular
...I am not attacking any particular God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, whenever or wherever they have been or will be invented.
believe successful design
The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion.
mean lessons way
I mean, in a way, I feel that one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives.