Richard Dawkins Quotes

It shows 'us vs. them', and I'm on the 'us' side.

In the past, most wars were motivated by the idea of nationhood. Today, however, wars are incited above all using religion as an excuse.

Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion.

Religion is the cause of all the problems in the world. I don’t believe in organized religion at all. It’s what separates people. One religion just represents fragments, it causes war. More people have died because of religious conflict than any other reason.

You think that religion is a thing that is there to help you and to see you through life, and then you wake up one morning and find the entire Irish situation, the civil war that's based on religion.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that's their gift.

Every conceivable cleavage of difference: Sindhi vs. Punjabi, Mohajirs vs. Pathans, Islam vs. Secularism, Shias vs. Sunnis, Deobandis vs. Barelvis, literates vs. illiterates, Woman vs. Man, Urban vs. Rural—has been exploited to magnify dissentions, giving rise to heinous blood baths, accentuated hatred, and intolerance.

Both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream ‘Allahu akbar …. I say let Allah sort it out.

I don't like to speak of Islamic violence, because every day, when I browse the newspapers, I see violence, here in Italy... this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law... and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics!

Organized religion is good for wars, battles, pissin' and moanin' and not much else.

Religion has been an enormous multiplier of tribal suspicion and hatred.

Lord, there's danger in this land, you get witch hunts and wars when church and state hold hands.

Acts of violence against one's own countrymen that are legitimated by religion are not new. Nor have such acts been unique to Islam.

To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.

Religion is a big problem in Israel and the Arab world, but again, the problem isn't religion but political leaders who want to use the religion.

We put labels on people and fight wars over them. If we truly want harmony, we have to get past the labels.

It would seem that men always need some idiotic fiction in the name of which they can hate one another. Once it was religion. Now it is the State.

Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood.

Religion a stalking horse to shoot other foul.

Brother will kill brother, spill blood across the land. Killing for religion, something I don't understand. Fools like me who cross the sea and come to foreign lands, ask the sheep for their beliefs; 'Do you kill on God's command?'

No nations are more warlike than those which profess Christianity.

The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred. Which is fine with me! Any time a bunch of holy people want to go out and kill each other I'm a happy guy!

I do believe, separate and apart from any particular election or movement, that we are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them.

It is not coincidental that for so-called religious fundamentalists - whether they are Western or Eastern, Muslim or Christian - rigid male dominance and "holy wars" are priorities. Or that competing sects of the same religion, such as Sunni and Shia, are at each other's throats. In these cultures, women are rigidly controlled by men.

There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.