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When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.

Richard Dawkins

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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
Turning
Genetic
Plant
Fertile
Brain
Cell
May
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Meme
Mind
Mechanism
Memes
Way
Host
Propagation
Cells
Virus
Literally
Viruses

More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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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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Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous.
Richard Dawkins
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I do think imagination is enormously valuable, and that children should be encouraged in their imagination. That's very true.
Richard Dawkins
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I don't feel depressed. I feel elated.
Richard Dawkins
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There is economics in biology, nothing is free, everything has to be paid for, there are costs as well as benefits to everything in life, for example, there was never sufficient natural selection pressure to develop better eyes, individuals could earn other things like smiley smiles rather than waste energy & time on better eyes.
Richard Dawkins
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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
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Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening.
Richard Dawkins
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Religion is the root of quite a lot of evil.
Richard Dawkins
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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.
Richard Dawkins
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Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.
Richard Dawkins
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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
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If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.
Richard Dawkins
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What I can't understand is why you invoke improbability and yet you will not admit that you're shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word God.
Richard Dawkins
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My love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned.
Richard Dawkins
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St. Augustine explicitly warns against a very narrow perspective that will put our faith at risk of looking ridiculous. If you step back from that one narrow interpretation, what the Bible describes is very consistent with the Big Bang.
Richard Dawkins
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Sometimes in life it is a good idea to stop,sometimes it is a good idea to go on. The trick is to decide when to stop
Richard Dawkins
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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
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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
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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
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We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.
Richard Dawkins