Quote

We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

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
Machines
Fills
Evolution
Robots
Blindly
Known
Genes
Programmed
Science
Vehicle
Vehicles
Stills
Preserve
Robot
Truth
Preserves
Genetics
Still
Selfish
Astonishment
Survival
Molecules

More quotes by Richard Dawkins

Image
I sympathize with politicians who have to watch every syllable they utter for fear it will be misused by somebody with an agenda.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children
Richard Dawkins
Image
Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don't know it.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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
Image
I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.
Richard Dawkins
Image
It is universally accepted that an admission of atheism would be instant political suicide for any (U.S.) presidential candidate.
Richard Dawkins
Image
[If] there is mercy in nature, it is accidental. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.
Richard Dawkins
Image
All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Mutation is random natural selection is the very opposite of random.
Richard Dawkins
Image
[Invading Iraq] will unite the entire Arab world against the West.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I think the written word is probably the best medium of communication because you have time to reflect, you have time to choose your words, to get your sentences exactly right. Whereas when you're being interviewed, say, you have to talk on the fly, you have to improvise, you can change sentences around, and they're not exactly right.
Richard Dawkins
Image
It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).
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
I hate the neologism owned for scored a victory over. I have no intention of owning anyone, and nobody will ever own me.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.
Richard Dawkins
Image
When we talk about genes for anything, like a gene for being gay or a gene for being aggressive or something of that sort, that a gene for anything may not have been a gene for that thing under different environmental conditions.
Richard Dawkins
Image
My thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings are all in my brain. My brain is going to rot.
Richard Dawkins