Richard Dawkins Quotes

Reflect often upon the rapidity with which all existing things, or things coming into existence, sweep past us and are carried away.

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

Nothing is, everything is becoming.

Everything is substance plus name and form. Name and form come and go, but substance remains ever the same.

Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?

Time stays, we go.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

Time marks us while we are marking time.

That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.

Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?

Nothing cannot exist forever.

In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.

Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be.

Let's be honest: material comes and goes.

All beautiful forms of this world are in the process of transformation. Nothing is stable. With every moment, our reality is changing. Mother Ganges, like nature, is constant, but no manifestation of hers remains. Likewise, all that we hold dear in this world is imperceptibly vanishing. We cannot cling to anything. But if we can appreciate the beauty of the underlying current of truth, we can enjoy a reality deeper than the fickle waves of joy and sorrow.

Everything that has form must have a beginning and an end.

We are occupants. No one has any lasting purchase on life or on the planet.

As long as you are a part of the physical process of the existence, there is nothing that does not change.

The world, life and human beings are only an illusion, a phantom, a dream image.

In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable. This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshy sensoria which we call self are ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleeting aware of temporary conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change. If you must label the absolute, use its proper name: Temporary.

You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?

Where dwells the religion? Tell me first where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought or gesture. They do not dwell or stay atall. Electricity cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore; it is passing, glancing, gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a secret which perplexes them, and puts them out.