Richard Dawkins Quotes

I fear … that morals do not of necessity advance hand in hand with the sciences.

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

The monopoly of science in the realm of knowledge explains why evolutionary biologists do not find it meaningful to address the question whether the Darwinian theory is true.

If you ask most atheists if the theory of evolution has anything to do with a belief, however, they will tell you that it doesn't. It's not something that has to be believed. It is a 'fact.'

The 'science' for which the United States is respected has nothing to do with the unscientific and baseless theory of evolution.

I was defeated by an elite group in Washington that have an agenda, the National Academy of Sciences and other science groups. They have an agenda to get evolution presented as hard, dogmatic fact. It is pure propaganda.

Anti-Evolution League

The most profound and serious indication of the moral implications underlying the ecological problem is the lack of respect for life evident in many of the patterns of environmental pollution.

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned.

I think it's a theory... the theory of evolution and I don't accept it as a theory.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law.

The majority of parents are poor psychologists and give their children the most questionable moral trainings. It is perhaps in this domain that one realized most how keenly how immoral it can be to believe too much in morality, and how much more precious is a little humanity than all the rules in the world.

As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad.

The content of scientific theory itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice.

The theory [of evolution] is a scientific mistake.

It would be a great thing if people could be brought to realize that they can never add to the sum of their happiness by doing wrong.

Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also, should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the microscope and the spectroscope or any other instrument of precision which may in the future be invented, constructed or used for the discovery of truth.

Do people get moral when they don't get ahead?

Evolution has long been badly taught. In particular, students - and even professional biologists - acquire theories of evolution without any deep understanding of what problem these theories attempt to solve. They learn but little of the evolution of evolutionary theory.

Character is a perfectly educated will.