Richard Dawkins Quotes

The vast majority of the world knows there's no reason to circumcise. Someone should tell the doctors.

THE most widespread form of child abuse in the United States is parents sending children to the government to be educated.

I also survived circumcision, a barbaric practice designed to remind you as early as possible that your genitals are not your own.

A decent person does not alienate children from a parent, no matter how angry they are at the parent for the divorce. It's unfair to the children, and it's unfair to the other human being

The village atheist has the right to be heard; he has no right to be heeded. While he has a right not to have his own children indoctrinated in what he believes are false and foolish teachings, he has no right to dictate what other children may be taught.

I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in creation born in the condition that requires immediate surgical correction is the human male.

Ircumcision, an archaic ritual mutilation that has no justification whatever and no place in a civilized society.

Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom and public health.

Well, of course there’s my own experience of being mutilated as a little child. Having gone through this cruel practice and all the long-term consequences that come with it, I just cannot sit back and watch it being done to thousands of little girls every year. I believe that it is my responsibility to use the attention I get to fight against the continuing practice of FGM.

"They've been trying to test on animals for the past 50 years. Nobody's come up with a cure,"he says. "If you want to test on somebody, test on me."

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.

I won't give up until the exploitation of all children has ended and all children have their rights.

In the Netherlands now, I imagine it's legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church.

It is easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.

If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope.

The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening.

I guess there are some rights of parents with what they choose their children to learn, but I'm biased in favor of freeing children to learn and not letting parents be too doctrinaire in indoctrinating their children.

I am circumcised, and I tell you something, I despise it. I despise it. I despise it... I am completely pissed off that I'm circumcised.

The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.

To ensure that children are protected, the abuse and exploitation of children must be brought to light and those who violate children brought to justice.

This is not about celebrity justice, this is about the rights of the children.

It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.

Parents have no right to impose their religion on their children... A Fundamentalist Protestant parent has no right to expect the state to support his own narrow conception of education.

Those in society who are in charge of schools must never forget that the parents have been appointed by God himself as the first and principal educators of their children and that their right is completely inalienable.

If responsibility for the upbringing of children is to continue to be vested in the family, then the rights of children will be secured only when parents are able to make a living for their families with so little difficulty that they may give their best thought and energy to the child's development and the problem of helping it adjust itself to the complexities of the modern environment.