Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Science tells us what we have reason to believe. Not what we have a duty to believe. Not what experts, in their pontificating wisdom, instruct us to believe... No, science tells us what there is good reason to believe.
Richard Dawkins
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Reason
Believe
Pontificating
Good
Instruct
Experts
Tells
Duty
Wisdom
Science
More quotes by Richard Dawkins
We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
Richard Dawkins
Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.
Richard Dawkins
I suppose if you look back to your early childhood you accept everything people tell you, and that includes a heavy dose of irrationality - you're told about tooth fairies and Father Christmas and things.
Richard Dawkins
My decision to be a scientist was a bit of a drift really, more or less by default.
Richard Dawkins
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.
Richard Dawkins
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
There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist, and quite good reasons for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.
Richard Dawkins
There is economics in biology, nothing is free, everything has to be paid for, there are costs as well as benefits to everything in life, for example, there was never sufficient natural selection pressure to develop better eyes, individuals could earn other things like smiley smiles rather than waste energy & time on better eyes.
Richard Dawkins
Evolution is a very, very important idea. It is the explanation for all of life - a stunningly simple, yet powerful explanation. If you think about it, before Darwin, we hadn't the foggiest idea of how we came into being. Now we do. It's still such an exciting idea that it is well worth everybody understanding it.
Richard Dawkins
No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.
Richard Dawkins
There may be some deep questions about the cosmos that are forever beyond science. The mistake is to think they are therefore not beyond religion too.
Richard Dawkins
Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him to kill women, and he was locked up for life. George W. Bush says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity God didn't vouchsafe him a revelation that there were no weapons of mass destruction).
Richard Dawkins
I'm fond of science fiction. But not all science fiction.
Richard Dawkins
Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [...] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis.
Richard Dawkins
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
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
I guess there are some rights of parents with what they choose their children to learn, but I'm biased in favor of freeing children to learn and not letting parents be too doctrinaire in indoctrinating their children.
Richard Dawkins
The rule of thumb based into the brain by natural selection would not have been, Be nice to your kin and be nice to potential reciprocators. It would have been, Be nice to everybody, because everybody would have been included.
Richard Dawkins
Along with William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin is Britain's greatest gift to the world. He was our greatest thinker.
Richard Dawkins
I speak as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Executive Branch of the United States government. The impression that people of faith are uniformly opposed to stem-cell research is not documented by surveys. In fact, many people of strong religious conviction think this can be a morally supportable approach.
Richard Dawkins