“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.”
Christmas
“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?”
RespectAll Quotes by Richard Dawkins
“Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.”
Car“The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.”
Poetry“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”
Faith“But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.”
Experience“Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.”
Nature“I love romantic poetry.”
Poetry“Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.”
Computers“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
God“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
Religion“The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”
Faith“Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.”
Age“I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13.”
Age“God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.”
God“When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.”
Beauty“There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?”
Respect“It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.”
Science“Segregation has no place in the education system.”
Education“The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.”
Science“Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”
Power