Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins FRS FRSLis an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 March 1941
CityNairobi, Kenya
Richard Dawkins quotes about
selfish abuse individual
Any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it.
hypocrite feet flying
Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite ... If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sum right.
sahara lucky evolution
We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
atheism there-is-no-god prove
We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude the He is very, very improbable indeed.
technology common-sense violence
Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.
giving-up memories brain
If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God.
followers and-love christ
Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree.
machines too-much emphasis
When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn't put too much emphasis on the word 'just.' There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.
dna levels genes
At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.
understanding way sometimes
Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way.
ignorance scientist enough
I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organised ignorance.
unusual species
We are a very, very unusual species.
atheist believe religion
Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.
healing medicine alternatives
If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine.