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Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes, we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
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More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.
Richard Dawkins
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Barring a theoretical resolution, which I think is unlikely, you either have to say there are zillions of parallel universes out there that we can't observe at present or you have to say there was a plan. I actually find the argument of the existence of a God who did the planning more compelling than the bubbling of all these multiverses.
Richard Dawkins
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Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.
Richard Dawkins
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Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunise against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin.
Richard Dawkins
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Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born
Richard Dawkins
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Faith is the lack of evidence, and it shouldn't be that difficult to convince people that the right reason to believe something is that there is evidence for it. People do not innately go for this view, but nevertheless it is not that difficult to teach.
Richard Dawkins
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The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.
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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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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bad things, like good things don't happen any more often than they ought to by chance. the universe has no mind, no feelings, and no personality, so it doesn't do things in order to either hurt or please you. bad things happen because things happen.
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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Religion is the root of quite a lot of evil.
Richard Dawkins
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I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.
Richard Dawkins
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Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.
Richard Dawkins
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The idea of an afterlife where you can be reunited with loved ones can be immensely consoling - though not to me.
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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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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Cloning may be good and it may be bad. Probably it's a bit of both. The question must not be greeted with reflex hysteria but decided quietly, soberly and on its own merits. We need less emotion and more thought.
Richard Dawkins
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Evolution is not a genetically controlled distortion of one adult form into another it is a genetically controlled alteration in a developmental program.
Richard Dawkins
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Religion: Together we can find the cure.
Richard Dawkins