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You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.

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
Clinton Richard Dawkins
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More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion.
Richard Dawkins
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My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.
Richard Dawkins
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You don't believe that the Earth is round only if you're an astronaut. You don't believe Napoleon existed only if you're a historian. You believe these things because they're facts, proved by evidence.
Richard Dawkins
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The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened.
Richard Dawkins
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I can't be sure God does not exist. On a scale of seven, where one means I know he exists, and seven I know he doesn't, I call myself a six. That doesn't mean I'm absolutely confident, that I absolutely know, because I don't.
Richard Dawkins
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We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes - the gibbons and orangutans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans but excludes humans.
Richard Dawkins
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We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
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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Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?
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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Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Richard Dawkins
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People really, really hate their religion being criticized. It's as though you've said they had an ugly face they seem to identify personally with it.
Richard Dawkins
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There is another kind of altruism that seems to go beyond that, a kind of super-altruism, which humans appear to have. And I think that does need a Darwinian explanation.
Richard Dawkins
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The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain.
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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False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment.
Richard Dawkins
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I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed.
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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We have this one life, let's enjoy it, let's live it to the full and don't get so worked up about don't identify yourself so passionately with this business called religion.
Richard Dawkins
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What Francis [Collins] was just saying about Genesis was, of course, a little private quarrel between him and his Fundamentalist colleagues. It would be unseemly for me to enter in except to suggest that he'd save himself an awful lot of trouble if he just simply ceased to give them the time of day.
Richard Dawkins