Richard Dawkins Quotes

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

To me punk rock is thinking outside of the box, outside of the program, outside the establishment.

I think that you're smarter than we were, but we had two things: one is, in our naïveté we believed we could change the world. And number two, we believed that another world was possible. And once that belief took hold of some critical mass, a tiny minority nonetheless, but a critical mass of people, then the world did change.

I think we need a big national dance.

The great news is that that sort of group of people and that sort of sensibility is beginning to become more active again. And I think partly it just has to do with the time. It has to do with the culture of resistance. The necessity is for us to pull together and to speak up and to make work and be visible.

If our hopes of building a better and safer world are to become more than wishful thinking, we will need the engagement of volunteers more than ever.

If Atheists are lonely and downtrodden, we have only ourselves to blame. Numerically, we are strong. Let's start punching our weight.

Organizing atheists is a bit like herding cats; They are on the whole too intelligent and independent minded to lend themselves to being herded.

I think the most important thing is discovering an idea that moves you, and then letting people who are moved by that idea find each other, and work together. A lot of times people focus on the technical side-"oh, I've got to take a class on non-profit development." Too few people allow themselves to think outside the box with regard to their issue areas.

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

Most new movements start this way: hundreds or thousands of individuals and groups, working in different fields and different locations, start thinking about change using a common language, without necessarily recognizing those shared values. You just start following your own vector, propelled along by people in your immediate vicinity. And then one day, you look up and realize that all those individual trajectories have turned into a wave.

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.

Rebels seldom make good revolutionaries, because organized action, even union with other people, is not possible for them.

If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.

One should be cautious about "general conceptions." I think a strong case can be made that activism today is as high as ever, perhaps more so, and is also taking new and significant forms. There has never been anything like the international solidarity movements that began to take shape in the 1980s, right in the mainstream, or the global justice movements that have become a very powerful force in later years. It's true that the society is highly atomized, which does induce a sense of hopelessness often - quite mistakenly I think.

Just because you think the path that's right for you might be lonelier, longer or less destined for traditional success than paths taken by others, don't be afraid to take it. If you choose your means well you will end up in the right place.

I suppose I've always been attracted to this sort of outsider in general - in literature, in music, politics, whatever - and to the person that is able to be relentlessly themselves. I don't think that I have that quality, that strength of mind.

What I say is join me and be part of the army and find ways that maybe even I haven't thought of I haven't even thought of to help spread this message and inspire people to do what inspires them. That's what I need you to do.

Each one of us has something to contribute. This really depends on each one doing their own thinking, but not following any kind of rule.

I don't really put too much emphasis on what somebody else might think of it. Otherwise your putting limits on yourself.

I have spoken about what we can do as citizens, what we can do as a responsive citizenry, and this is where we have to shatter our complacency and become "active souls,"and be prepared to engage in aware - that personal struggle between our grief and our sorrow. But I don't think we have any choice.

Sharing experience and building public support for the full range of rights is more powerful than legal cases.

To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.

My own view - and I'm very open to hearing other perspectives - is that this movement-building needs to begin at home, in local communities. It isn't about trying to launch a brand new national party overnight. It's about people in communities coming together across lines of difference, bringing with them their movements, their families, and coming together and saying, "How can we together build a movement of movements here at home? What would that look like? What do we want to do right here in our communities?"

Question authority; think for yourself. Talk to people, do things unrelated to school - to come up with your own framework for living. The world is too complex and people are too different to be overly prescriptive about the details.