Skip to content

Richard Dawkins Quotes

born 1941 England

Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is known for his advocacy of atheism.

England
Biologists
Feminists
Memoirists
Non-fiction authors

Also known as: Dawkins, Dawkins, Richard

Random Richard Dawkins quote

192 quotes

This not only misses the point, it is the precise antithesis of the point.

The Blind Watchmaker (1986)

There has been progress in design, but not progress in accomplishment.

The Blind Watchmaker (1986)

Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.

The Blind Watchmaker (1986)

Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

The Blind Watchmaker (1986)

Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth.

The Magic Of Reality (2012)

Mutation may be random, but selection definitely is not.

Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)

To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.

The Blind Watchmaker (1986)

There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work.

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable.

Unweaving the Rainbow (1998)

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

The genes are the master programmers, and they are programming for their lives.

The Selfish Gene (1976)

What is illiberal is not persuasion but imposition of one's views.

Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun.

The biblical evidence for the existence of purgatory is, shall we say, ‘creative’, again employing the common theological trick of vague, hand-waving analogy.

I'm not clever enough to be a physicist.

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.

I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.

This is where they come into their own, for there's money in hope: the more desperate the hope, the richer the pickings.

A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out.

The Enemies of Reason (2007)

The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.

The Selfish Gene (1976)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Richard Dawkins (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.