Quote

I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales.

Richard Dawkins

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
Actor
Author
Biologist
Epistemologist
Essayist
Ethologist
Evolutionary Biologist
Geneticist
Science Communicator
Science Writer
Screenwriter
Kenya's capital
Clinton Richard Dawkins
Clinton Dawkins
C. Richard Dawkins
C. Dawkins
CR Dawkins
R. Dawkins
Think
Thinking
Fairy
Tales
Magic

More quotes by Richard Dawkins

Image
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.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Very close cousins like humans and chimps have almost all their genes in common. Slightly less close cousins like humans and monkeys still have recognizably the same genes. You could carry on right on down to humans and bacteria, and you will find continuous compelling evidence for the hierarchical tree of cousinship.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown great courage, in the face of spiteful vested interests, in demonstrating how easy it is for people to concoct memories that are entirely false but which seem, to the victim, every bit as real as true memories.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Effective searching procedures become, when the search-space is sufficiently large, indistinguishable from true creativity.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The feature of living matter that most demands explanation is that it is almost unimaginably complicated in directions that convey a powerful illusion of deliberate design.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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
Image
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I think there could be a very large number who are creationists by default. Those are the people I want to reach.
Richard Dawkins
Image
When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as 'faith'.
Richard Dawkins
Image
An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Superficially it's a problem if homosexuality is genetic - if the difference between people's sexual preferences is genetic - because at least a pure homosexual would be unlikely to reproduce and therefore pass on the genes. So the first question you ask is, is it actually genetic, and the answer is probably to some extent yes.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Matthew and Luke handle the problem differently, by deciding that Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem after all. But they get him there by different routes.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I do disapprove very strongly of labelling children, especially young children, as something like 'Catholic children' or 'Protestant children' or 'Islamic children.'
Richard Dawkins
Image
In the beginning was simplicity.
Richard Dawkins