Richard Dawkins Quotes

Kids delight in 'magical thinking', whether in the form of the Tooth Fairy or the saints: whether you see these as comforting lies or eternal verities, they are part of how we help kids make sense of the world.

As much as I'd like to meet the tooth fairy on an evening walk, I don't really believe it can happen.

Santa is our culture's only mythic figure truly believed in by a large percentage of the population. It's a fact that most of the true believers are under eight years old, and that's a pity.

Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas, and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.

To me in my childhood, elves and fairies of all sorts were very real things, and my dolls were as really children as I was myself a child.

The minute that you bring a unicorn into a story, you know that it's a fairy tale or a fable, because unicorns don't exist as animals. They exist as fantasy creatures.

What is the real purpose behind the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? They seem like greater steps toward faith and imagination, each with a payoff. Like cognitive training exercises.

Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency.

I grew up in a small hotel with many rooms, so when I became aware of 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,' I inspected all the wardrobes, sure one had to be a portal to another world. I was also a true believer in faeries, and perhaps still am.

When I was a child, I wanted to be... a fairy. I still do, really, except that now I've now graduated to wanting to be a pixie.

At home, when the heating pipes made noises, I imagined a tiny person was in there skipping with a rope. The fantasy world of tiny things became my escape.

There I am, watching Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favourite actors in the world, walk into the room dressed up as Father Christmas, being hilarious, and I'm suddenly thinking, 'Where am I?'

For a time, I believed not in God nor Santa Claus, but in mermaids. They seemed as logical and possible to me as the brittle twig of a seahorse in the zoo aquarium or the skates lugged up on the lines of cursing Sunday fishermen - skates the shape of old pillowslips with the full, coy lips of women.

I've always said that I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I could make a great movie about him if I set my mind to it.

When you're a little girl, you kind of gravitate towards all of the princesses and things.

I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.

We used to indulge hopelessly as a family at Christmas. When the children were little, I dressed up as Father Christmas. They knew it was a gag, but they loved it. I remember stealing into their bedrooms at 1 A.M. and filling the stockings up at the end of the bed.

I grew up believing in Santa Claus, and we still treat our house at Christmas with a huge reverence for that belief - even though our children are 19 through 23.

I never heard the Gospel until I was 18 years old. Jesus Christ... the name was synonymous to me as the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus.

I think Father Christmas is real because the belief is real. The belief becomes the reality.

I have memories of the time when I was younger and when I believed in Santa Claus, which was the best part of Christmas. Back then, I wrote to Santa every year, hoping that my mom would post the letter with a stamp to the North Pole!

When I was a kid, Santa, the Tooth Fairy, my stuffed animals - they were real. There is the tremendous suspension of disbelief that you have as a child. It's harder as an adult.

When I watch my sons play, I think, God, acting's the most natural thing in the world. They take the 'Star Wars' characters and say, 'Let's pretend that I'm Hans and you're Luke and that we're on this planet,' etc.

I believe in elves and giants. I believe that fairy tales are nothing more than news reports of what once happened.

In the field of economics we maintain to this day some of the most primitive ideas, some of the most radically false ideas, some of the most absurd ideas a brain can hold. ... but all this give no uneasiness to the average brain. That long-suffering organ has been trained for more thousands of years than history can uncover to hold in unquestioning patience great blocks of irrelevant idiocy and large active lies.