Richard Dawkins quotes - page 14

I hate the neologism "owned" for "scored a victory over." (Richard Dawkins)
science is the best way to do anything. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Another force driving progressive evolution is the so-called "arms-race." View quote
Richard Dawkins
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. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Do you advocate the Ten Commandments as a guide to the good life? Then I can only presume that you don't know the Ten Commandments. View quote
Richard Dawkins
It doesn't hurt my feeling when I get vilified by fundamentalist religious people. I've actually made comedy out of it. I've made light of that. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Genome sequencing has changed taxonomy. View quote
Richard Dawkins
The universe doesn't owe us condolence or consolation; it doesn't owe us a nice warm feeling inside. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Science has taught us, against all intuition, that apparently solid things like crystals and rocks are really almost entirely composed of empty space. And the familiar illustration is the nucleus of an atom is a fly in the middle of a sports stadium, and the next atom is in the next sports stadium. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression. View quote
Richard Dawkins
If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle. (Richard Dawkins)
Of course, we would love to know more about the exact moment of Big Bang, but interposing an outside intelligence does nothing to add to that knowledge, as we still know nothing about the creation of that intelligence. View quote
Richard Dawkins
I can remember at the age of about six being fascinated by the planets and learning all about Mars and Venus and things. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Compassionate doctors sometimes lie to patients about the severity of their condition, and it is not always wrong to do so. View quote
Richard Dawkins
People really, really hate their religion being criticized. It's as though you've said they had an ugly face; they seem to identify personally with it. View quote
Richard Dawkins
If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection. View quote
Richard Dawkins
If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Public sharing is an important part of science. View quote
Richard Dawkins
I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition. View quote
Richard Dawkins
The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no. (Richard Dawkins)
Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree. View quote
Richard Dawkins
If you were to actually travel around schools and universities and listen in on lectures about evolution, you might find a fairly substantial fraction of young people, without knowing what it is they disapprove of, think they disapprove of it, because they've been brought up to. View quote
Richard Dawkins
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. View quote
Richard Dawkins
I like to think 'The God Delusion' is a humorous book. I think, actually, it's full of laughs. And people who describe it as a polarizing book or as an aggressive book, it's just that very often they haven't read it. View quote
Richard Dawkins