Richard Dawkins Quotes

I had always been scrupulously careful to avoid the smallest suggestion of infant indoctrination, which I think is ultimately responsible for much of the evil in the world. Others, less close to her, showed no such scruples, which upset me, as I very much wanted her, as I want all children, to make up her own mind freely when she became old enough to do so. I would encourage her to think, without telling her what to think.

Obviously people don't want other people to tell them how to think or what to believe, or to tell them what's right politically and what's wrong.

People being encouraged to make up their own minds and think for themselves is so important. This world talks endlessly about freedom of choice, but we've never been [nothing] more than a nation of robots. Everybody is seduced by corporate culture.

The Santa myth is one of the most effective means ever devised for intimidating children, eroding their self- esteem, twisting their behavior, warping their values, and slowing their development of critical thinking skills.

You shouldn't be looking for the secret to making people follow fads, you should be looking for the secret to making them think for themselves. Because that's what science is all about.

Parents can ruin children, and sometimes that's a learned behavior. Sometimes you can't blame your parents for it, sometimes you can. I think to me, that's what the whole paradox is, is people that have children that don't even know how to raise them.

Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.

I hate to tell people what they should think 'cause I really have an aversion when people tell me what to think.

I'm not writing for fundamentalists. I'm writing for the people who have been repelled by that kind of thinking and yet who think there might be something they haven't yet discovered.

This is the problem with the way you educate your children. You don't want your young ones drawing their own conclusions. You want them to come to the same conclusions that you came to. Thus you doom them to repeat the mistakes to which your own conclusions led you.

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

... on the whole 'blasphemy' has been a force for good in human history. It is part of the process by which millions of people have come to reject theocracy and think for themselves.

Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.

The child is thinking and receiving vibrational thought from you on the day that he enters your environment. That is the reason that beliefs are transmitted so easily from parent to child.

People are so brainwashed by the rules that they don't know what really matters.

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that's control our children's will--that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

They take the circuits out of people’s brains that make it possible for them to think for themselves. Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I’m sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do.

Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices.

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.

Don't pay attention to "authorities," think for yourself.

One can often hear from the young people:" I do not want to live according to others' mind. I can think of it myself. " Why should one think of something, when it is already thought about. Take it and go farther, this is the strength of the mankind.

We aren't allowed to have any opinions. People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn't stop you having your own opinion. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn't be prevented from saying what they think.