Richard Dawkins Quotes

Most thoughtful people would agree that morality in the absence of policing is somehow more truly moral than the kind of false morality that vanishes as soon as the police go on strike or the spy camera is switched off, whether the spy camera is a real one monitored in the police station or an imaginary one in heaven.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

We ought never to do wrong when anyone is looking.

I don't think it matters if there is a god or not. I've met people who believe in God that are good and that are bad. And I've met people who don't believe in God that are good and that are bad. So, just be good. I'm good. Not cos I think I'll go to heaven but because when I do something bad, I feel bad. And when I do something good, I feel good.

I should wish to die if a man who is impure should parade his purity in front of me.

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, andobedience; and as its operation is silent, and only enforces the motives of morality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives.

I think that ethical behaviour is another feature of the kind of inner discipline that leads to a happier existence.

There has never been a man mean and at the same time virtuous.

I believe in good, having morals, be a decent person.

A disciplined conscience is a man's best friend. It may not be his most amiable, but it is his most faithful monitor.

Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.

For many people, morality means a set of rules governing the disposition on one's genital organs; or a set of injunctions against lying, stealing, or killing except when such acts are sanctioned by church or state.

Is it truly being good if the only reason I behave well is so I can get more loot at Christmas? I mean, really, all I'm doing is saying I can be bribed.

It is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right.

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.

Only Atheists have morals, the religious have reward and punishment. That's not morality, that's sucking up.

I conduct my life with an expectation that people will do the right thing. Yet even with all my experience, I am still surprised when they do not.

Purpose ... is held to be most closely connected with virtue, and to be a better token of our character than are even our acts.

A good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself which the neglect of legislators had forgotten to supply.

A good man will certainly also possess courage; but a brave man is not necessarily good.

Everybody has an instinctive desire to do good things and avoid evil. But that desire is sterile as long as we have no experience of what it means to be good.

It is of the essence of virtue that the good is not to be done for the sake of a reward.

Ethics, decency and morality are the real soldiers

There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it.