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Richard Dawkins Quotes (1941-)
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About Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is known for his advocacy of atheism.
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Richard Dawkins quotes.
“Mitochondrial DNA is blessedly celibate. (p.53)”
“So whereabouts in my body might there be a black hole?”
“Mutation may be random, but selection definitely is not.”
“Your DNA may be destined to mingle with mine. Salutations!”
“Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
“Religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labelling device in history.”
“Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism. (p. 40)”
“Science replaces private prejudice with publicly verifiable evidence.”
“There has been progress in design, but not progress in accomplishment.”
“This not only misses the point, it is the precise antithesis of the point.”
“We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out.”
“Islam needs a feminist revolution. It will be hard. What can we do to help?”
“SJWs can't forgive Shakespeare for having the temerity to be white and male.”
“The genes are the master programmers, and they are programming for their lives.”
“Isn't Deepak Chopra just exploiting Quantum jargon as plausible-sounding hocus pocus?”
“There are people in the world who desperately want not to have to believe in Darwinism.”
“Contrary to earlier prejudices, there is nothing inherently progressive about evolution.”
“Eternity is best spent under a general anesthetic – which is what is going to happen.”
Richard Dawkins Quotes by Topic
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Richard Dawkins on Evolution 4 quotes
“This belief, that Darwinian evolution is "random", is not merely false. It is the exact opposite of the truth. Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially non-random.”
Richard Dawkins on DNA 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on DNA →Richard Dawkins on Darwinism 3 quotes
“There are people in the world who desperately want not to have to believe in Darwinism.”
Richard Dawkins on Islam 3 quotes
“How can people bear to live their lives bound by such insanely specific yet manifestly pointless rules?”
Richard Dawkins on Atheism 3 quotes
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
Richard Dawkins on Wild animal suffering 3 quotes
“Wild animals almost never die of old age: starvation, disease, or predators catch up with them long before they become really senile. Until recently this was true of man too. Most animals die in childhood, many never get beyond the egg stage. Starvation and other causes of death are the ultimate reason why populations cannot increase indefinitely. But as we have seen for our own species, there is no necessary reason why it ever has to come to that. If only animals would control their birth rates, starvation need never happen.”
Richard Dawkins on Speciesism 3 quotes
“The director of a zoo is entitled to "put down" a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might "put down" a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote (most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! [...] The only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.”
Richard Dawkins on Mythology 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Mythology →Richard Dawkins on Religion 2 quotes
“I think that what really matters about a religion is whether it's true.”
Richard Dawkins on Purgatory 2 quotes
“The biblical evidence for the existence of purgatory is, shall we say, ‘creative’, again employing the common theological trick of vague, hand-waving analogy.”
Richard Dawkins on Religious text 2 quotes
“People who claim to derive their morals from scripture do not really do so in practice. And a very good thing too, as they themselves, on reflection, should agree.”
Richard Dawkins on Apostasy 2 quotes
“In the case of immigrants from Syria and Iraq I would like to see special preference given to apostates, people who have given up Islam, they are in particular danger.”
What Richard Dawkins Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Richard Dawkins shared regarding contemporaries.
Richard Dawkins on Jesus 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Jesus →Richard Dawkins on William Lane Craig 2 quotes
“I have no intention of assisting Craig in his relentless drive for self-promotion.”
Richard Dawkins on Adolf Hitler 2 quotes
“What's to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn't right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question.”
Richard Dawkins on Robert Axelrod 2 quotes
“The first American edition of The Evolution of Cooperation was published in 1984. I read it as soon as it appeared, with mounting excitement, and took to recommending it with evangelical zeal, to almost everyone I met. Everyone of the Oxford undergraduates I tutored in the years following its publication was required to write an essay on Axelrod's book, and it was one of the essays they most enjoyed writing.”
Richard Dawkins on Barack Obama
Richard Dawkins on John F. Kennedy
Richard Dawkins on Burqa
“I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.”
Richard Dawkins on Sam Harris
Richard Dawkins on Charles Darwin
“Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the most powerful idea ever. And like all the best ideas it is beguilingly simple.”
Richard Dawkins on Peter Boghossian
“Peter Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I'd be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive — and very much needed.”
Richard Dawkins on Pat Condell
“Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he's on our side.”
Richard Dawkins on James Randi
“Paranormal phenomena have a habit of going away whenever they are tested under rigorous conditions. This is why the $1,000,000 reward of James Randi, offered to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal effect under proper scientific controls, is safe.”
Quotes About Richard Dawkins
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Richard Dawkins from others.
Mario Bunge on Richard Dawkins
“All the biology that Dawkins tries to present as modern biology is no such thing... the idea of the selfish gene is an idea against biochemistry, against genetics which tells us that the DNA does not replicate itself, that it's not divided by itself, that it's divided by enzymes, that you have to take into account not only the genome; you also have to take into account the -ome, a whole system in which we can distinguish but not separate the different elements. That's why Dawkins has been so successful; science fiction is sold much better than scientific works.”
Francis Collins on Richard Dawkins
“Dawkins is a master of setting up a straw man, then dismantling it with great relish. In fact, it is hard to escape the conclusion that such repeated mischaracterizations of faith betray a vitriolic personal agenda, rather than a reliance on rational arguments that Dawkins so cherishes in the scientific realm”
Helena Cronin on Richard Dawkins
“We are now ready to survey afresh the battlefield of the sexes. With The Selfish Gene as our guide, we can compile a gene-centred inventory of any participants that we come across. There are the principal antagonists: ‘male’ and ‘female’ genes in conflict and the resulting multifarious adaptations in male and female creatures. There are the victors and victims that we would otherwise have missed: the agents of genomic imprinting, visiting the feuds of the previous generation upon the children. There are the subversive opportunists: mitochondria waging their own private war against nuclear genes over their mitochondrial mausoleum, the male parts of plants. And there are the innocent bystanders: victims of collateral damage from other’s battles, such as drowned and poisoned females. So the banner of the battle of the sexes should depict not a spider’s quietus in his lover’s jaws nor the withered anthers of a flower; for they represent other concerns of genes. Nor need it depict struggle or pain, injury or death. It could instead portray the dazzling beauty of the peacock’s tail, the deep intimacy of the titis’ embrace, the finely poised equilibrium that builds a newborn baby. Such are the ways of genes that even their conflicts—‘male’ against ‘female’ genes—can appear deceptively to us as harmony and beauty in their bearers.”
Marian Stamp Dawkins on Richard Dawkins
“I haven't lived with the author of The Selfish Gene for nearly twenty-five years but I have lived in close and constant contact with the book itself since before it was published. Its words and figures of speech are thrown at me almost daily from student essays. The questions it raises are the driving force behind the most successful tutorials and the sound of pennies dropping as each new generation of students takes in the extraordinary implications of what the book is saying, is as loud now as it ever was. The Selfish Gene seems to occupy a unique place in biological writing. Some books, like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, herald a new age and have a huge impact on the way people think at the time but thereafter are read mainly for historical interest. Others form part of an ongoing movement but are soon superseded by more up-to-date versions or more fashionable means of expression. But if The Selfish Gene had not been written when it was, there would still be a need for it to be written today. There are simply no books that have taken its place, even now when so many other books have followed in its wake.”
Daniel Dennett on Richard Dawkins
“A psychologist colleague, on reading a draft of this essay, asked if The Selfish Gene is considered required reading in any philosophy graduate program. Certainly specialists in the philosophy of science or philosophy of biology would be expected to have read it, but what about students of epistemology or philosophy of mind or language? We philosophers are a somewhat conservative lot, loath to grant that anybody but a professional philosopher could write something worthy of entry into the canon. If you put The Selfish Gene on the required reading list, just which ‘classic’ would you bump from the list to make room for it? I have seen enough philosophy students enthusiastically tell me how they were transformed by reading the book to judge that it pulls its weight and then some, so yes, I put Dawkins’ book alongside classics by such non-philosophers as Turing and Kuhn as essential thinking tools for any student of philosophy. In addition to everything else they will learn from it, they will discover that it is actually possible to write arguments that are both rigorous and a joy to read. That discovery, if enough philosophers took it to heart, could transform our discipline.”
Niall Ferguson on Richard Dawkins
“The question is whether there can be any progress of the mind in a secular world. That is to say, if we turn away from the ethical teachings of Christ, or for that matter Muhammad, what is left to guide us? What incentive do we have to be good if there is no afterlife? The problem that militant atheists confront, including recent popularisers of atheism like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, is that there isn’t really a very good answer to that.”
Jane Goodall on Richard Dawkins
“I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years.”
Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy on Richard Dawkins
“Richard Dawkins is quite simply incomparable. No one can make science so exciting, so interesting, or so clear... If only Stephen Hawking had a tenth of his clarity.”
John Gray on Richard Dawkins
“To the best of my recollection, I have met Dawkins only once and by chance, when we coincided at some meeting in London. It must have been in late 2001, since conversation at dinner centered around the terrorist attacks of September 11. Most of those at the table were concerned with how the West would respond: would it retaliate, and if so how? Dawkins seemed uninterested. What exercised him was that Tony Blair had invited leaders of the main religions in Britain to Downing Street to discuss the situation—but somehow omitted to ask a leader of atheism (presumably Dawkins himself) to join the gathering. There seemed no question in Dawkins's mind that atheism as he understood it fell into the same category as the world's faiths. In this, Dawkins is surely right. To suppose that science can liberate humankind from ignorance requires considerable credulity. We know how science has been used in the past—not only to alleviate the human lot, but equally to serve tyranny and oppression. The notion that things might be fundamentally different in the future is an act of faith—one as gratuitous as any of the claims of religion, if not more so. Consider Pascal. One of the founders of modern probability theory and the designer of the world's first mass-transit system, he was far too intelligent to imagine that human reason could resolve perennial questions. His celebrated wager has always seemed to me a rather bad bet. Since we cannot know what gods there may be (if any), why stake our lives on pleasing one of them? But Pascal's wager was meant as a pedagogical device rather than a demonstrative argument, and he reached faith himself by way of skeptical doubt. In contrast, Dawkins shows not a trace of skepticism anywhere in his writings. In comparison with Pascal, a man of restless intellectual energy, Dawkins is a monument to unthinking certitude.”
Richard Harries on Richard Dawkins
“Dawkins is a brilliant writer and speaker on science. His grasp of the subject and his use of vivid analogies can explain scientific concepts and make them clear even for the non-scientist...”
Peter Higgs on Richard Dawkins
“"What Dawkins does too often is to concentrate his attack on fundamentalists. But there are many believers who are just not fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is another problem. I mean, Dawkins in a way is almost a fundamentalist himself, of another kind."”
John Krebs on Richard Dawkins
“Anyone familiar with ‘selfish gene’ thinking will immediately spot the problem. The view that communication evolves for mutual benefit is essentially an argument based on the premise that natural selection works for the good of the group or species, rather than the good of the gene. It is especially remarkable that, in spite of this implicit underpinning assumption, many of the major proponents of the ‘information’ view of animal communication were avid, neo-Darwinian, individual selectionists. It took Richard’s relentless, uncompromising, and surgical application of neo-Darwinian thinking to expose the logic of animal communication with coruscating clarity.”
About Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is known for his advocacy of atheism.