Richard Dawkins Quotes

I'm not afraid of death. What's to fear? Once you're dead, that's it. Nothing. I don't believe in heaven or hell. That's baloney. What matters is the here and now. Yes, I'm 88, and there are things I can't do: I can't run a race or climb Everest. But isn't life magnificent?

The acceptance of death gives you more of a stake in life, in living life happily, as it should be lived. Living for the moment.

I was brought up to appreciate the here and now, and, knowing this is your only life, to view death as an inevitable and reassuring end.

You may think life is sweet now, but when death is a heartbeat away then life becomes unbearably desirable. And when you survive, everything you do will be enhanced and filled with greater joy: the sunlight, the breeze, a good wine, a woman's lips, a child's laughter.

Every morning when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day.

life is not so long that one can grow tired of it

Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?' What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing

When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness.

Life. Consider the alternative.

Thinking about death... produces love for life. When we are familiar with death, we accept each week, each day, as a gift. Only if we are able thus to accept life bit by bit does it become precious.

Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste.

If I never wake again, I certainly will have lived while I was alive.

Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.

Life is beautiful. Really, it is. Full of beauty and illusions. Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead.

We're all - all of us - a minute away from dying. If you're aware of that, life becomes a little more precious. Also, you have a slightly different outlook. It's not so much "gimme, gimme."

And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day," she said. "Do you see?

Why me?' I ask God. God says nothing. I laugh and the stars watch. It's good to be alive.

If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn't you make the most of it?

Part of the pleasure of being alive is the knowledge that you're not dead yet.

We tend to take a great deal for granted, because you feel like you're going to live forever. It's only if you lose a friend, or maybe have a near-death experience, [that] many events and people in your life suddenly attain real significance.

Lie is more worth living, more full of interest when you are likely to lose it. It shouldn't be, perhaps, but it is. When you're young and strong and healthy, and life stretches ahead of you, living isn't really important at all. It's young people who commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from sheer anxiety and worry. But old people know how valuable life is and how interesting. - Jane Marple

Do not act as if you had a thousand years to live.

When you're at your own parents' funeral, when you're at somebody that you love's funeral, you realize how precious life is. And you say, "As long as I can walk and I'm healthy, there's always tomorrow."

I have come to understand that every day is something to cherish.

If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?