Richard Dawkins Quotes

The Bible is unfortunately unclear on a long list of moral and social questions and sex is one of them. On the one hand, there are expressions of admiration for the reportedly virgin mother of Jesus, but other portions of scripture speak quite accommodatingly of polygamy.

Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a god.

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would by her own radiant light, though sun and moon where in the flat sea sunk.

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.

I hope nobody is seriously suggesting that we get our morals from scripture because if we did we'd be stoning people for working on the Sabbath or switching on a light on the Sabbath. So the point is that you can find good bits of the Bible but you have to cherry-pick, you have reject the nasty bits and pick the nice bits.

Morality is more than possible without God, it is entirely independent of him.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

I for one don't need a supreme "sacred" arbiter in order to be a moral being.

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes; and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity.

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

Moral autonomy appears when the mind regards as necessary an ideal that is independent of all external pressures.

The system of morality to be gathered from the ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.

That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quotations from Pagan authors, is well known to every scholar... To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues on the part of the asserted either gross ignorance or wilful fraud.

Every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil.

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.

The Scriptures were not given to increase our knowledge, but to change our lives.

Fiction supplies the only philosophy that may readers know; it establishes their ethical, social, and material standards; it confirms them in their prejudices or opens their minds to a wider world.

I think that the Bible as a system of moral guidance in the 21st century is insufficient, to put it mildly. I feel quite strongly that we need a new moral lodestone if we can't rely on what is inside our own selves. Which I think, actually, is pretty reliable.

I have lived according to rules that I embrace, but I don't feel like my job is to force others to embrace the rules that I embrace for myself.

We need to attack the false foundation of autonomous human reasoning that leads to evolution and millions of years, and proclaim that God's revealed Word is authoritative and its history of the world is foundational to Christian morality and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I was never one to stand on a soap box and say, "This is how you need to live your life!" It was never about that.

The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.

I do know I'm going to heaven. I have read all of the Scriptures and the passages that define paradise and things like that. To me, what matters is I'm going to be with Jesus and I'm going to be in his presence. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. At that point, you know some to judgment, some to salvation.