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We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. ... This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object's sole reason for living.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
Actor
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Biologist
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Evolutionary Biologist
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Kenya's capital
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More quotes by 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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Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
Richard Dawkins
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Race does not come into it. It is pure religion and culture. Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam. That would have been a fair comparison.
Richard Dawkins
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Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.
Richard Dawkins
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In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science, because it was for the good of the Communist Party.
Richard Dawkins
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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
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I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content.
Richard Dawkins
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That was unfortunate. I should have compared religion with religion and compared Islam not with Trinity College but with Jews, because the number of Jews who have won Nobel Prizes is phenomenally high.
Richard Dawkins
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If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!
Richard Dawkins
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Religion is the root of quite a lot of evil.
Richard Dawkins
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It is interesting to ask whether there's any general reason why being religious might make you do nice things or indeed nasty things. It's possible that people do nice things because they're religious. One reason might be they're hoping for a reward in Heaven, which is not a very noble reason.
Richard Dawkins
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It's a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn't think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed so that he could forgive himself.
Richard Dawkins
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If you are religious at all, it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false (knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan), you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.
Richard Dawkins
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I don't shout people down. I argue people down, perhaps.
Richard Dawkins
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For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.
Richard Dawkins
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Ideally, I'd like everybody to be secular.
Richard Dawkins
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When I sign books, I get lines of people and what they usually say is: Thank you. You have changed my life. I am really moved by that.
Richard Dawkins
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Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.
Richard Dawkins
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We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.
Richard Dawkins
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However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place?
Richard Dawkins