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We are a very, very unusual species.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
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More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. The watchmaker is blind
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Quantum mechanics, that brilliantly successful flagship theory of modern science, is deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Eastern mystics have always been deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Therefore, Eastern mystics must have been talking about quantum theory all along.
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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.
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Faith is the lack of evidence, and it shouldn't be that difficult to convince people that the right reason to believe something is that there is evidence for it. People do not innately go for this view, but nevertheless it is not that difficult to teach.
Richard Dawkins
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The time has come for people of reason to say: Enough is Enough! Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous.
Richard Dawkins
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Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense.
Richard Dawkins
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Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.
Richard Dawkins
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All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.
Richard Dawkins
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I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drfiting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate which leaves the old gene panting far behind.
Richard Dawkins
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What is the purpose of the universe? is a silly question.
Richard Dawkins
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I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare.
Richard Dawkins
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If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God.
Richard Dawkins
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I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.
Richard Dawkins
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There may be some deep questions about the cosmos that are forever beyond science. The mistake is to think they are therefore not beyond religion too.
Richard Dawkins
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I am an enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene.
Richard Dawkins
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Organizing atheists is a bit like herding cats They are on the whole too intelligent and independent minded to lend themselves to being herded.
Richard Dawkins
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Religious faith, is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, it doesn't matter what, without a whisper of doubt, or a whiff of evidence, and believe so strongly in some cases, that they are prepare to kill and die for it, without the need for further justification.
Richard Dawkins
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Scientists can have their judgment clouded by their professional aspirations. And the pure truth of faith, which you can think of as this clear spiritual water, is poured into rusty vessels called human beings, and so sometimes the benevolent principles of faith can get distorted as positions are hardened.
Richard Dawkins
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My decision to be a scientist was a bit of a drift really, more or less by default.
Richard Dawkins
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Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth.
Richard Dawkins