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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

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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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If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!
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There does seem to be a sense in which physics has gone beyond what human intuition can understand. We shouldn't be too surprised about that because we're evolved to understand things that move at a medium pace at a medium scale. We can't cope with the very tiny scale of quantum physics or the very large scale of relativity.
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My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about.
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Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.
Richard Dawkins
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Faith is not the opposite of reason.
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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The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear.
Richard Dawkins
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The truth is more magical - in the best and most exciting sense of the word - than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.
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If circumcision has any justification AT ALL, it should be medical only. Parents' religion is the worst of all reasons - pure child abuse.
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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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Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
Richard Dawkins
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I think there could be a very large number who are creationists by default. Those are the people I want to reach.
Richard Dawkins
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The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
Richard Dawkins
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I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous ideas.
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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Islamic myths are mostly actually plagiarized from the Christian ones, both biblically and in terms of modern creationism. If you read Islamic creationist literature, it's pretty much lifted from American evangelical literature.
Richard Dawkins
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Religion has been a powerful weapon in the hands of governments, in the hands of priests, in the hands of kings who have used it as a weapon to keep down the populace. It is a wonderful way of disciplining people and making them do what you want, to tell them that if they don't do what you want they will, for example, go to Hell.
Richard Dawkins
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The so-called sophisticated theologians, especially ones who are very nice, like Rowan Williams and Jonathan Sacks, you sometimes don't quite know where you are with them. You feel that when you attack them, you're attacking a wet sponge.
Richard Dawkins
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In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.
Richard Dawkins
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I do disapprove very strongly of labelling children, especially young children, as something like 'Catholic children' or 'Protestant children' or 'Islamic children.'
Richard Dawkins