Richard Dawkins Quotes

Nothing in the world delights a truly religious people so much as consigning them to eternal damnation.

Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.

In the bible homosexuality is condemned, but along with divorce and greed and callousness toward poor people. So its elevation to a highest priority among some religious groups has been very disturbing to me.

Adding more people causes problems. But people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge; the brakes are our lack of imagination and unsound social regulations of these activities. The ultimate resource is people—especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefits, and so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well.

Incidentally, I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the great science fiction writer and biochemist Dr. Isaac Asimov. John Updike, who is religious, says I talk more about God than any seminarian. Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ.

Children know something that most people have forgotten.

People are difficult to rule, because of their knowledge.

Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.

To speak of beauty is to enter another and more exalted realm-a realm sufficiently apart from our everyday concerns as to be mentioned only with a certain hesitation. People who are always in praise and pursuit of the beautiful are an embarrassment, like people who make a constant display of their religious faith. Somehow, we feel such things should be kept for our exalted moments, and not paraded in company, or allowed to spill out over dinner.

The phrase "singular incredible life" seems to me that it applies more appropriately to Jane Goodall or David Attenborough, people I regard with awe and who stand for great humanism and knowledge.

True science and true religion are twin sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is religious; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the scientific depth and firmness of its basis.

No matter what age you are, if you have it and you know it, then people should listen to you.

You don't know me. You know one me, just like I know one you. And you can't know every me, and I can't know every you.

We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

When it comes to people -- don't write about who you know; but what you know of human nature.

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education.

I don't have an opinion about whether or not politics should appear more in fiction or not, generally. I think politics are a part of life, but a part of life that most people don't think about very much, most of the time. Or, people think about it superficially and they talk about it superficially because they don't know very much.

You can't educate people that are not healthy. But you certainly can't keep them healthy if they're not educated.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper.At any meeting of politicianshow impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from the Constitution!

And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered theological rancor.

The first step towards solving the omnivore's dilemma is knowledge: eating with full consciousness. When that happens, I have a lot of confidence that people will make good choices.

Prussia is great because her people are intelligent. They know the alphabet. The alphabet is conquering the world.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.