Quote

I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life.

Richard Dawkins

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Call
Elephants
Attention
Polite
Religion
Notice
Effect
Human
Effects
Devaluing
Humans
Room
Devout
Trying
Rooms
Elephant
Life
Everybody
Specifically

More quotes by Richard Dawkins

Image
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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
Image
Professor Challenger, Conan Doyle's science hero, was a sort of irascible man constantly bellowing at people, so he was a little bit of a departure from both of those stereotypes.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I don't want to sound callous. I mean, even if I have nothing to offer, that doesn't matter, because that still doesn't mean that what anybody else has to offer therefore has to be true.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Religious people split into three main groups when faced with science. I shall label them the know-nothings, the know-alls, and the no-contests.
Richard Dawkins
Image
If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn't been tested or it has failed its tests.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Scientists can have their judgment clouded by their professional aspirations. And the pure truth of faith, which you can think of as this clear spiritual water, is poured into rusty vessels called human beings, and so sometimes the benevolent principles of faith can get distorted as positions are hardened.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Evolution is fundamentally hostile to religion.
Richard Dawkins
Image
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance.
Richard Dawkins
Image
We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Effective searching procedures become, when the search-space is sufficiently large, indistinguishable from true creativity.
Richard Dawkins
Image
We should take astrology seriously. No, I don't mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humouring it as a piece of harmless fun.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I am persuaded that 'child abuse' is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like...eternal hell.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.
Richard Dawkins
Image
All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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
Image
If you're willing to answer yes to a God outside of nature, then there's nothing inconsistent with God on rare occasions choosing to invade the natural world in a way that appears miraculous.
Richard Dawkins