Richard Dawkins Quotes

I'm fascinated by the idea that genetics is digital. A gene is a long sequence of coded letters, like computer information. Modern biology is becoming very much a branch of information technology.

What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a 'spark of life.' It is information, words, instructions... If you want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.

These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish.

Police states cannot endure under the advance of the computer because it increases the power of the people far faster than the powers of surveillance.

If formerly restrictive regimes can be persuaded to see the free flow of information not as a threat to the power of sovereign states, but as the creator of a viable economic infrastructure and a population incentivised to take advantage of the new economy, the next century will be promising indeed.

We have changed our environment more quickly than we have learned how to change ourselves.

We have discovered over 95 percent of all the genes that have been discovered by science off the deck of my sailboat.

The workers and professionals of the world will soon be divided into two distinct groups. Those who will control computers and those who will be controlled by computers. It would be best for you to be in the former group.

A miracle is something unexpected which we do not understand. A hundred years ago, the jumbo jet would have been a miracle.

Massive increases in productivity due to the happy marriage if information technology and advanced manufacturing techniques are having a chilling, unprecedented effect on job creations.

Every technology is used before it is completely understood. We are living in that lag, and it is a right time to keep our head.

The technological transformation of society contains within itself the dynamo of its own management, but only if we create laws and regulations to permit the information revolution to wash through our democratic structures.

The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production.

One who understands the relationships between the human heart and the human mind will always out-hack those who chase after an ever-changing technology.

Writing genetic code like we do software will usher in a completely new way of living for all of us. When this happens, our society will be as fundamentally changed as we have seen from the invention of computers.

Information technology and the Internet are rapidly transforming almost every aspect of our lives - some for better, some for worse.

We all think Al Gore invented email so we could save time and save paper, to save trees. And that includes phone trees.

Biology - DNA - is technology. It is coding. It is physical coding, but still code.

Technology is probably the single biggest driver of productivity gains for the developed countries. For example, I think it's much more important than free trade.

When Colin Powell showed up as Secretary of State in 2001, most State Department employees still didn't even have computers on their desks. When I got there they were not mostly permitted to have handheld devices. I mean, so you're thinking how do we operate in this new environment dominated by technology, globalizing forces? We have to change, and I can't expect people to change if I don't try to model it and lead it.

I'm surprised at some technological development, and the realization that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I think the CD-ROM is the best example of that. The idea of having a whole symphony, or opera, or novel in a little piece of plastic is pretty amazing.

A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.

It may seem daunting, but I am a prisoner of hope. We are more connected than ever before, we have more knowledge, and there are solutions if we work together. Today's technology is a great asset in encouraging global cooperation and understanding.

With the revolution in information technology, with the revolution in transport technologies, I think just geography has lost its all significance.