Quote

If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God.

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
Giving
Please
Nerves
Work
Memories
Laid
Mind
Wonderful
Appeals
Something
Brain
Impulse
Good
Understand
Complexes
Never
Process
Excellent
Photosynthesis
Give
Complex
Nerve
Problem
Works
Appeal

More quotes by Richard Dawkins

Image
The true scientific understanding of the nature of existence is so utterly fascinating how could you not want people to share it? Carl Sagan, I think, said 'when you're in love, you want to tell the world.' And who, on understanding a scientific view of reality, would not, as it were, fall in love and want to tell the world.
Richard Dawkins
Image
[Invading Iraq] will unite the entire Arab world against the West.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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
Image
In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically, those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to survive.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I do think imagination is enormously valuable, and that children should be encouraged in their imagination. That's very true.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I find many of answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Ironically, I originally wrote the tweet with Jews and thought, That might give offense. And so I thought I better change it.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Most of the ones [Nobel prizes] that have gone to Muslims have been peace prizes, and the [number of Muslims] who have gotten them for scientific work is exceedingly low. But in Jews, it is exceedingly high.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Religion is a powerful weapon that can be used because it persuades people to do things. And thus it can be used for good or ill. But it should not be a powerful weapon at all.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Each step is not too improbable for us to countenance, but when you add them up cumulatively over millions of years, you get these monsters of improbability, like the human brain and the rain forest. It should warn us against ever again assuming that because something is complicated, God must have done it.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Atheism is not a religion. Abstinence is not a sex position.
Richard Dawkins
Image
It's about time we start criticizing faith.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Natural selection is anything but random.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods express a preference for natural methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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
Image
What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?
Richard Dawkins
Image
The odd thing about tradition is, the longer it's been going, the more people seem to take it seriously - as though sheer passage of time makes something which to begin with was just made up, turns it into what people believe as a fact.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The universe doesn't owe you a sense of hope
Richard Dawkins
Image
I think what I'd really like to see would be a mass consciousness-raising movement so that we would all become vegetarian.
Richard Dawkins