Richard Dawkins Quotes

Science is very good at answering the 'how' questions. 'How did the universe evolve to the form that we see?' But it is woefully inadequate in addressing the 'why' questions. 'Why is there a universe at all?' These are the meaning questions, which many people think religion is particularly good at dealing with.

In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.

I don't know how to put this gently, but I'm trying to tackle the biggest question of all, which is the God question.

If God exists, there's no way he's French

There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't.

We are engaged here in the most important pusuit in history. The search for meaning. What is What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person?How did we come to be, and wha will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules this game, and how might we best play it?

Hindus believe in God positively. Buddhism does not try to know whether He is or not.

There must be a God because he made me.

I've been on the planet for 40 years now, and I'm still none the wiser as to what it's all about really. I've never worried about life's big questions. People at my age sit about pondering, 'Why are we here?' The only time I ever asked myself that is when Suzanne booked us a surprise holiday to Lanzarote.

Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things

And I wonder if there is really any point to what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to make of a world where a man can get rich playing "let's pretend

We cannot start with God and deduce the universe from his existence; we must start with the world as we know it, and deduce God from the world.

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is.

When I say you don't have to be a believer, you just have to say - you have to ask the question to say am I concerned about the tough questions in life, being introspective enough to say, who am I, why am I, what am I?

No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.

It's only a slight exaggeration to say we haven't progressed much beyond the invention of agriculture when it comes to our view of the natural world.

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this - what is the world? And what are we? From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers. This is what is really meant by any such phrase as 'mankind's need for metaphysics.'

Man will not live without answers to his questions.

Is there a God? There is, but we don't know where. Or who. And, indeed, why.

Every cradle asks us, Whence? and every coffin, Whither? The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.

There must be a God, because I don't know how things work.

I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and he answered, I am not He, but He made me.

If there is a God, I want to see him. I don't want to just hear some holy roller shouting about him.

These are not easy questions. Who am I? Why am I here? They're not easy because the human being isn't wired to function as an individual.