Richard Dawkins Quotes

Scientology and all the other cults are one-dimensional, and we live in a three-dimensional world. Cults are as dangerous as drugs. They commit the highest crime: the rape of the soul.

Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? If this were then subjected to an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain.

It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds.

From a child's play, we can gain understanding of how he sees and construes the world--what he would like it to be, what his concerns are, what problems are besetting him.

Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.

It's not enough to bash in heads. You've got to bash in minds.

Witchcraft scum exploiting the dumb turning children into punks and slaves.

Children use the fist until they are of age to use the brain.

It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.

The development of a child is guaranteed in his curiosity to discover the cause behind each and every incident.

The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive.

Working with children is very different than the way in which I work with adults. I never tell the children the actual truth of the thing that I want them to act. Although children are really into play and play acting, and this is a major part of their existence, they never actually find the playing or acting of adults credible.

[Children are] like talking animals. Their consciousness is so different from ours that they constitute a different species. They don't have to be particularly interesting children; just the fact that they are children is sufficient. They don't know what anything is, so they have to make it up. No matter how dull they are, they still have to figure things out for themselves.

What children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone

All children are sweet at five. But at twelve they begin to get silly.

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.

Then I reminded myself that all intelligent children suffer bad dreams.

It’s not whether children learn from television, it’s what children learn from television... because everything that children see on television is teaching them something.

When you have a baby you start thinking of death cuz' you see the opposite of life. I've calmed down now but for the first or two years, I kept thinking: "Oh my God, if I die what's going to happen to the child?" And you realise how vulnerable they are, but how critical your own life is because they're so dependent on you. You do feel your own mortality. I kept saying to myself: "OK, when they're 18, I'll be 'x'; so if they get married at 30, I'll be'x'will I get to see grandchildren?" So, since they've been born I've been thinking about death the whole time.

One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

Be careful what you say to your children. They may agree with you.

The word education must not be understood in the sense of teaching but of assisting the psychological development of the child.

The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them.

I did not know that children think the hard questions they ask are easy and thus expect easy answers to them, and that they are disappointed when they get cautious, complex answers.

I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.