Quotes from Richard Dawkins

I think that there are good things that happen and bad things that happen.

Good and evil - I don't believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil.

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.

All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.

The history of science has been one long series of violent brainstorms, as successive generations have come to terms with increasing levels of queerness in the universe.

The universe doesn't owe you a sense of hope

Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.

Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.

There are many religious points of view where the conservation of the world is just as important as it is to scientists.

When brains get sufficiently big, presumably, as human brains have, consciousness seems to emerge.

It's very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.

I guess the Democrats have to pretend to be more pious than the Republicans because they are under suspicion of not being.

I've always been very suspicious of the left-right dimension in politics.

Even if 'going retrograde' or 'moving into Aquarius' were real phenomena, something that planets actually do, what influence could they possibly have on human events? A planet is so far away that its gravitational pull on a new-born baby would be swamped by the gravitational pull of the doctor's paunch.

We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.

I certainly would absolutely never do what some of my American colleagues do and object to religious symbols being used, putting crosses up in the public square and things like that. I don't fret about that at all; I'm quite happy about that.

Segregation has no place in the education system.

An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off. Note: Dawkins was quoting a former editor of New Scientist Magazine, who is as yet unidentified (possibly Jeremy Webb)

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.