Richard Dawkins Quotes

Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.

Instead of assuming everything you're being told is the truth, ask plenty of questions.

In my opinion, it helps enormously to know why something is true, rather than being told it is true, for why should you believe me? Never believe anything on the authority of a single person but seek confirmation — and reason is the best confirmation

Believing isn't thinking, but we've been programmed to believe that believing is thinking. To use our intelligence to think means we're keeping the energy active, we're thinking, we're really using the power of our intelligence in a thinking way. But when we've been programmed to believe, we're no longer thinking, because energy flows.

I think the mistake that people make often times is you just lose touch of reality and you have to never be afraid to call someone's bullshit or call someone's bluff when something doesn't make sense.

We have an expression in New York City government - "In God we trust, but for everyone else, bring data." It's so easy to pick up a sound byte and say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I believe that," without really thinking.

Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for have no safeguard to rest on but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us.

The really important thing is learning how to sceptically question and rely on empirical evidence.

Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence "Two times two is four."

I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion.

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there. So rather than correct the weird ideas, I would rather them to know how to think in the first place. Then they can correct the weird idea themselves.

Philosophy has to be enquiring; it can take nothing on faith, and its methods are based not on the blind acceptance of authority, but on establishing truths by reason and argument.

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.

I'd rather see folks doubt what's true than accept what isn't.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Journalists should recalibrate themselves to be more skeptical of the consensus of their peers. That’s because a position that seems to have deep backing from the evidence may really just be a reflection from the echo chamber. You should be looking toward how much evidence there is for a particular position as opposed to how many people hold that position: having 20 independent pieces of evidence that mostly point in the same direction might indeed reflect a powerful consensus, while having 20 like-minded people citing the same warmed-over evidence is much less powerful.

Skepticism is the lifeblood of scientific progress. By constantly asking whether there is a different answer, a better approach or an alternative view, scientists drive improvements and innovations that ultimately benefit everyone. It is not “antiscience” to be skeptical—it’s definitively pro-science.

You've accepted a lot of things without evidence. Find out what the evidence is for that. Find out what the evidence is for everything that you accept.

I love what I think, and I'm never tempted to believe it.