Richard Dawkins Quotes

Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.

We all have two things in common, no matter who we are: We were born and we are going to die.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

Birth and death are the most singular events we experience - and the contemplation of death, as of birth, should be a thing of beauty, not ignobility.

Time is a gift and a threat because we are bodily creatures. We only come into existence through the bodies of others, but that very body destines us to death. We must be born and we must die.

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.

The people who pretend that dying is rather like strolling into the next room always leave me unconvinced. Death, like birth, must be a tremendous event.

Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera.

I’m always feeling death, and that is a part of life. When you know a lot of people, you will always experience death.

Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her that it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose dying: Everything!

We all die at the end, but does that nullify everything? Would most people rather say, "I wish I hadn't been born?" Once you're born you'll have to die, now is that funny or sad?

Everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.

If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.

Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born

It's so unfair that we should die, just because we are born.

People are usually pretty hungry after a funeral. I guess it's because we all realize that time is running out and we better eat all we can. Please don't mention that to my mother.

Some people were born just so they could be buried.

People die all the time. It's just that you're not around.

Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. Death is the opposite of birth.

In fact living is dying.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

[Sex] is something big and cosmic. What else do we have? There's only birth and death and the union of two people - and sex is the only one that happens to us more than once.