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We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
Actor
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Biologist
Epistemologist
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Evolutionary Biologist
Geneticist
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Kenya's capital
Clinton Richard Dawkins
Clinton Dawkins
C. Richard Dawkins
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Alone
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Earth
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Memes
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Gene

More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.
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Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. The watchmaker is blind
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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.
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There is enough information capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it, three or four times over.
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The Universe does not owe us meaning.
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Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.
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Molecular genetics can show off some surprising relationships like, for example, the close relationship of whales to hippopotamuses, which I think nobody ever guessed until molecular data was looked at. The closest relatives of whales are hippopotamuses, even closer than any other cloven-hoofed animals.
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Cheetah genes cooperate with cheetah genes but not with camel genes, and vice versa. This is not because cheetah genes, even in the most poetic sense, see any virtue in the preservation of the cheetah species. They are not working to save the cheetah from extinction like some molecular World Wildlife Fund.
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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.
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A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.
Richard Dawkins
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It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, mad cow disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
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Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.
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Evolution never looks to the future.
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The physicist's problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist's problem is the problem of complexity.
Richard Dawkins
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I'm a sucker for nice religious leaders. I fall for it every time.
Richard Dawkins
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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.
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Atheism is not a religion. Abstinence is not a sex position.
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I mean I think that when you've got a big brain, when you find yourself planted in a world with a brain big enough to understand quite a lot of what you see around you, but not everything, you naturally fall to thinking about the deep mysteries. Where do we come from? Where does the world come from? Where does the universe come from?
Richard Dawkins
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I do like Philip Pullman.And that's an exception because Philip Pullman's books allow magic.
Richard Dawkins
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My love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned.
Richard Dawkins