Quotes from Richard Dawkins

George Bush is a catastrophe for the world. And a dream for Bin Laden.

Of course you can use the products of science to do bad things, but you can use them to do good things, too.

If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking will change it.

As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.

I am baffled by the way sophisticated theologians who know Adam and Eve never existed still keep talking about it.

What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

A good scientific theory is one which is falsifiable, which has not been falsified.

A good theory explains a lot but postulates little.

What Darwinian theory shows us is that all human races are extremely close to each other. None of them is in any sense ancestral to any other; none of them is more primitive than any other. We are all modern races of exactly equal status, evolutionarily speaking.

I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.

Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.

Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

It's about time we start criticizing faith.

Being dead will be no different from being unborn -- I shall be just as I was in the time of William the Conqueror or the dinosaurs or the trilobites. There is nothing to fear in that.

No matter how much knowledge and wisdom you acquire during your life, not one jot will be passed on to your children by genetic means. Each new generation starts from scratch.

But, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.

The truly adult view [...] is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.

Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.

If saying that religion should be a private matter and should not have special influence in public life is illiberal, then 74% of U.K. Christians are illiberal, too.

Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature.

You can't imagine how gratifying it is to have a reader come up to you and say, 'You changed my life.'

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?