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Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
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Biologist
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Evolutionary Biologist
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Kenya's capital
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More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.
Richard Dawkins
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Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
Richard Dawkins
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By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. -this quote is actually found in Carl Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, where he attributes it to engineer James Oberg, who says he stole it from someone else.
Richard Dawkins
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The physicist's problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist's problem is the problem of complexity.
Richard Dawkins
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It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine.
Richard Dawkins
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It is an absurd law [Section 295A of the Indian penal code] but also extremely dangerous because it gives fanatics, whether they are Hindus, Catholics or Muslims, a licence to be offended. It also allows people who are in dispute with you to make up false accusations of blasphemy.
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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You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions.
Richard Dawkins
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Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'.
Richard Dawkins
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There are very interesting controversies within evolution however, whether evolution occurs is not one of them. It definitely does.
Richard Dawkins
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Not a single one of your ancestors died young. They all copulated at least once.
Richard Dawkins
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I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life.
Richard Dawkins
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There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting... But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.
Richard Dawkins
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I think the world's always a better place if people are filled with understanding.
Richard Dawkins
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You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution.
Richard Dawkins
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Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born
Richard Dawkins
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No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.
Richard Dawkins
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Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
Richard Dawkins
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Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.
Richard Dawkins
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Faith is not the opposite of reason.
Richard Dawkins