Richard Dawkins Quotes

There is nothing wrong in performing rituals according to one's beliefs and culture.

Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."

The religion of the Bible is the best in the world. I see the infinite value of religion. Let it be always encouraged. A world ofsuperstition and folly have grown up around its forms and ceremonies. But the truth in it is one of the deep sentiments in human nature.

I am not convinced that the U.S. is more religious than Britain. Even if more people go to church in America, I think the U.S. is a much more secular country than Britain.

Primitive societies without religion have never been found.

I was raised Jewish. I didn't know anything about Christianity.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

In every religion there is an element of the supernatural, varying with the influence of pure reason over its devotees.

I think that probably all religions sound bizarre to the people who are not the practitioners of them.

Christianity has its own superstition, anyway: Why you turn three times, what this saint means, why you pray to the patron saint of lost causes, why you go this way or that way.

We have religious superstitions of the Middle Ages that shape our 21st century social policies.

The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Perhaps there is no other set of people, (at least, not visibly united together,) who lay so much and yet no more stress than you do on rectitude of opinions, on outward modes of worship, and the use of those ordinances which you acknowledge to be of God. So much stress you lay even on right opinions, as to profess, that you earnestly desire to have a right judgment in all things, and are glad to use every means which you know or believe may be conducive thereto; and yet not so much as to condemn any man upon earth, merely for thinking otherwise than you do; much less, to imagine that God condemns him for this

All the drama you see about Christianity or the Catholic religion? People are seeing through that, and there are really authentic people out there with faith.

I've always been interested in what passes for what we call religion, what other cultures call their spiritual life.

It really wasn't until I was 15 or 16 years old that I realized that the church was always there; it was always a part of what we were doing, even if it wasn't at the center of everything we did.

I am fundamentally an anthropologist and a rationalist. What I say is that human societies are very different from what specialists call 'animal society' because the former have religion.

I was never really into any kind of hard-core religious structure or dogma.

There's a lot of misunderstanding out there, particularly in the difference between religion and culture. For example, I hear people criticise Islam for arranged marriages, but that's nothing to do with Islam. It is the culture in some places, but it's actually against Islam.

Race does not come into it. It is pure religion and culture. Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam. That would have been a fair comparison.

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'

How do cultures differ from one another? Above all, in their customs. Tell me how you dress, how you act, what are your habits, which gods you honor, and I will tell you who you are. Man not only creates culture, he carries it around with him. Man is culture.

All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.

Hinduism is not a codified religion.

There's a difference between freedom of worship and freedom of religion. Worship is an event that happens inside the house of worship. Religion is a lifestyle. It is a way of living.