Richard Dawkins quotes - page 10

Those people who think sexual abuse is a black-or-white, all-or-none category are incapable of clear, logical thought. (Richard Dawkins)
There is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic, mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information. View quote
Richard Dawkins
The wheel may be one of those cases where the engineering solution can be seen in plain view, yet be unattainable in evolution because it lies [on] the other side of a deep valley, cutting unbridgeably across the massif of Mount Improbable. View quote
Richard Dawkins
It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. View quote
Richard Dawkins
... but the dominance hierarchy itself is not something that natural selection favours or disfavours. What natural selection favours or disfavours is the individual behaviour of which the dominance hierarchy is a manifestation. I would put war and overpopulation in that category. View quote
Richard Dawkins
The second requirement of a virus-friendly environment – that it should obey a program of coded instructions – is again only quantitatively less true for brains than for cells or computers. We sometimes obey orders from one another, but also we sometimes don't. Nevertheless, it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions. Instructions to genuflect, to bow towards Mecca, to nod one's head rhythmically towards the wall, to shake like a maniac, to "speak in tongues" – the list of such arbitrary and pointless motor patterns offered by religion alone is extensive – are obeyed, if not slavishly, at least with some reasonably high statistical probability. View quote
Richard Dawkins
The absolute morality that the religious person might profess would include what, stoning people for adultery, death for apostasy, punishment for breaking the Sabbath; these are all things which are religiously based absolute moralities. I don't think I want an absolute morality. I think I want a morality that is thought-out, reasoned, argued, discussed-based upon, almost say-intelligent design. Can we not design our society which has the sort of morality, the sort of society we want to live in? View quote
Richard Dawkins
Each generation is a filter, a sieve; good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or without reproducing. View quote
Richard Dawkins
The likelihood is that, in 100,000 years time, we shall either have reverted to wild barbarism, or else civilisation will have advanced beyond all recognition – into colonies in outer space, for instance. In either case, evolutionary extrapolations from present conditions are likely to be highly misleading. View quote
Richard Dawkins
I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave. View quote
Richard Dawkins
It is generally characteristic of arms races, including human ones, that although all would be better off if none of them escalated, so long as one of them escalates none can afford not to. (Richard Dawkins)
Group selection theory would therefore predict a tendency to evolve towards an all-dove conspiracy ... But the trouble with conspiracies, even those that are to everybody's advantage in the long run, is that they are open to abuse. View quote
Richard Dawkins
(Spectrum level 6) I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Think about the two qualities that a virus, or any sort of parasitic replicator, demands of a friendly medium, the two qualities that make cellular machinery so friendly towards parasitic DNA, and that make computers so friendly towards computer viruses. These qualities are, firstly, a readiness to replicate information accurately, perhaps with some mistakes that are subsequently reproduced accurately; and, secondly, a readiness to obey instructions encoded in the information so replicated. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Amusingly, it [astrology] falls foul of our modern taboo against lazy stereotyping. How would we react if a newspaper published a daily column that read something like this: "Germans: It is in your nature to be hard-working and methodical, which should serve you well at work today. In your personal relationships, especially this evening, you will need to curb your natural tendency to obey orders. Chinese: Inscrutability has many advantages, but it may be your undoing today. British: Your stiff upper lip may serve you well in business dealings, but try to relax and let yourself go in your social life. View quote
Richard Dawkins
But it is we that choose to divide animals up into discontinuous species. On the evolutionary view of life there must have been intermediates, even though, conveniently for our naming rituals, they are usually extinct. View quote
Richard Dawkins
The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously. A joyful life is an active life - it is not a dull static state of so-called happiness. Full of the burning fire of enthusiasm, anarchic, revolutionary, energetic, daemonic, Dionysian, filled to overflowing with the terrific urge to create - such is the life of the man who risks safety and happiness for the sake of growth and happiness. View quote
Richard Dawkins
And when we look closely, we find a system of morals which any civilised person today should surely find poisonous. View quote
Richard Dawkins
I think there really is a place for science in literature and I think that may be increasing. View quote
Richard Dawkins
What is it that makes natural selection succeed as a solution to the problem of improbability, whereas chance and design both fail at the starting gate? The answer is that natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. View quote
Richard Dawkins
It is an article of passionate faith among "politically correct" biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway. (Richard Dawkins)
So whereabouts in my body might there be a black hole? View quote
Richard Dawkins
science is the best way to do anything (if you want to do terrible things with technology, a terrible weapons for example science is the best way to do it because science is the best way to do anything) View quote
Richard Dawkins
The river of my title is a river of DNA, and it flows through time, not space. It is a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues. View quote
Richard Dawkins
Every person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins. It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish. Occasionally, my colleagues lecturing in universities lament having undergraduate students walk out of their classes when they talk about evolution. This is almost entirely Muslims. View quote
Richard Dawkins