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Richard Dawkins

291 quotes

• “So whereabouts in my body might there be a black hole?”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Isn't Deepak Chopra just exploiting Quantum jargon as plausible-sounding hocus pocus?”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn't been tested or it has failed its tests.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The idea that ancient equal years of accumulated wisdom is a fallacy. [...] In medicine, 'ancient' also means developed before we understood the causes of disease, before germ theory. It was based on ignorance then and age makes it no truer. We misguidedly look back to a golden age that never was; ours is the golden age of safe tested medicine, effective beyond placebo, in which we've cut infant mortality and conquered diseases, then forgotten they existed.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Sceptical rational inquiry is always the best approach. [...] we can think independently, be truly open-minded. That means asking questions, being open to real corroborated evidence. Reason has liberated us form superstition and given us centuries of progress. We abandon it at our peril.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips... continue the list as long as desired.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: , Black Swan, 2009, page 8 (ISBN 9780552775243).

• “A body is a patchwork of compromises.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: , Black Swan, 2009, page 70 (ISBN 9780552775243).

• “Ingenious? Yes. And scrupulous. Really good scientists have to be both.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: , Black Swan, 2009, page 120 (ISBN 9780552775243).

• “We don't need fossils – the case for evolution is watertight without them; so it is paradoxical to use gaps in the fossil record as though they were evidence against evolution”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (2009).

• “[...] my interest in biology has been largely driven by questions about origins and the nature of life, rather than – as is the case for most young biologists I have taught – by a love of natural history.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, Black Swan, 2013, page 13 (ISBN 9780552779050)

• “We're too stupid to decide on EU (that includes me)”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I think there really is a place for science in literature and I think that may be increasing”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “People are terrified of being thought racist, there's an awful confusion in many people's minds. They think Islam is a race, which of course it isn't”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If you're seen to criticise Islam you are often accused of racism, which is absurd.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I'm all for offending people's religion. I think it should be offended at every opportunity”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In the case of immigrants from Syria and Iraq I would like to see special preference given to apostates, people who have given up Islam, they are in particular danger.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is very good that Wikipedia also gives a page to "Internet Meme". Internet memes are arguably the most important subset of memes today”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (5 December 2012)

• “Those people who think sexual abuse is a black-or-white, all-or-none category are incapable of clear, logical thought.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (23 December 2012)

• “Some states, e.g. "pregnant", are all-or-none, no intermediates. But sexual abuse has shades of grey, from violent buggery to mild touching.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (23 December 2012)

• “Haven't read Koran so couldn't quote chapter & verse like I can for Bible. But often say Islam greatest force for evil today”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (28 February 2013)

• “With respect to those meanings of "human" that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (13 March 2013)

• “I'm told theology is outside my field of expertise. But is theology a "field" at all? Is there anything in "theology" to be expert ABOUT?”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (16 April 2013)

• “I hate the neologism "owned" for "scored a victory over". I have no intention of owning anyone, and nobody will ever own me.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (19 May 2013)

• “Don't ask God to cure cancer & world poverty. He's too busy finding you a parking space & fixing the weather for your barbecue.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (20 July 2013)

• “All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (8 August 2013)

• “Saw a down-and-out in Seattle last night. His sign said not "I need food" or "I need a job" but "I need a fat bitch". What could this mean?”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (13 October 2013)

• “Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in the Belfast Telegraph (3 November 2013)

• “If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (17 February 2014)

• “I've seen a dog & bitch indulging in full 69. Males of many species including Drosophila lick female genitals before copulation.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (24 March 2014)

• “Who (apart from the pig) is damaged by bacon?”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (21 June 2014)

• “Suggest always put Islamic "scholar" in quotes, to avoid insulting true scholars. True scholars have read more than one book.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (25 July 2014)

• “Mild paedophilia is bad. Violent paedophilia is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of mild paedophilia, go away and learn how to think. Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (29 July 2014)

• “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (20 August 2014)

• “Eugenics was not inspired by Darwin's natural selection but by ancient agricultural ARTIFICIAL selection. Eugenics is UNnatural selection.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (15 February 2015)

• “University is about confronting new ideas, unfamiliar, un-"safe". If you want to be "safe" you are not worthy of a university education.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (22 April 2015)

• “Islam needs a feminist revolution. It will be hard. What can we do to help?”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (22 July 2015)

• “You know you've won the argument when the only counter argument they can find is that you are white or male or old.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (30 July 2015)

• “Don't call him "clock boy" since he never made a clock. Hoax Boy, having hoaxed his way into the White House, now wants $15M in addition!”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (24 November 2015)

• “National pride has evil consequences. Prefer pride in humanity. German pride gave us Hitler, American pride gave us Trump, British pride gave us Brexit. If you must have pride, be proud that Homo sapiens could produce a Darwin, Shakespeare, Mandela, Einstein, Beethoven.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (30 March 2019)

• “When I tweet on politics, even if I merely post a url, I get many replies like “Stick to science. Politics is not your field.” Which field, then, does qualify one to hold a political opinion? Are scientists specifically disqualified from thinking & caring about the world?”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (1 November 2020)

• “Science is not a social construct. Science’s truths were true before there were societies; will still be true after all philosophers are dead; were true before any philosophers were born; were true before there were any minds, even trilobite or dinosaur minds, to notice them.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (6 March 2021)

• “The buzz words of the campus—diversity, inclusion, microaggression, power differential, white privilege, group safety—have become the buzz words in public life. Already confusing on campus, they become noxious off campus.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (23 December 2022)

• “Supreme Court rules that a woman is legally defined as . . . a woman. Congratulations. And “The concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man”. Yes, the science was settled in the Precambrian. Nice that the law has finally caught up.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Tweet (16 April 2025), quoted in "JK Rowling hails victory for women after Supreme Court trans ruling" (16 April 2025), The Telegraph.

• “So to the book's provocation, the statement that nearly half the people in the United States don't believe in evolution. Not just any people but powerful people, people who should know better, people with too much influence over educational policy. We are not talking about Darwin's particular theory of natural selection. It is still (just) possible for a biologist to doubt its importance, and a few claim to. No, we are here talking about the fact of evolution itself, a fact that is proved utterly beyond reasonable doubt. To claim equal time for creation science in biology classes is about as sensible as to claim equal time for the flat-earth theory in astronomy classes. Or, as someone has pointed out, you might as well claim equal time in sex education classes for the stork theory. It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).If that gives you offence, I'm sorry. You are probably not stupid, insane or wicked; and ignorance is no crime in a country with strong local traditions of interference in the freedom of biology educators to teach the central theorem of their subject.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Reviewing Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution (1989) by Maitland A. Edey and Donald C. Johanson

• “You see, if you say something positive like the whole of life – all living things – is descended from a single common ancestor which lived about 4,000 million years ago and that we are all cousins, well that is an exceedingly important and true thing to say and that is what I want to say. Somebody who is religious sees that as threatening and so I am represented as attacking religion, and I am forced into responding to their reaction. But you do not have to see my main purpose as attacking religion. Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading. And that is what is so exciting for me.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Yet scientists are required to back up their claims not with private feelings but with publicly checkable evidence. Their experiments must have rigorous controls to eliminate spurious effects. And statistical analysis eliminates the suspicion (or at least measures the likelihood) that the apparent effect might have happened by chance alone.Paranormal phenomena have a habit of going away whenever they are tested under rigorous conditions. This is why the £740,000 reward of James Randi, offered to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal effect under proper scientific controls, is safe. Why don't the television editors insist on some equivalently rigorous test? Could it be that they believe the alleged paranormal powers would evaporate and bang go the ratings?Consider this. If a paranormalist could really give an unequivocal demonstration of telepathy (, , reincarnation, whatever it is), he would be the discoverer of a totally new principle unknown to physical science. The discoverer of the new energy field that links mind to mind in telepathy, or of the new fundamental force that moves objects around a table top, deserves a Nobel prize and would probably get one. If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the answer. You can't do it. You are a fake.Yet the final indictment against the television decision-makers is more profound and more serious. Their recent splurge of paranormalism debauches true science and undermines the efforts of their own excellent science departments. The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudo-scientific charlatans. The public appetite for wonder can be fed, through the powerful medium of television, without compromising the principles of honesty and reason.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The reason Smolin's idea is interesting is that it may answer the challenge, "The universe is too good to be true. It looks like a put-up job." But, note that the Smolin hypothesis cannot be used to account in particular for the BIOLOGICAL part of that "too good to be true". Smolinian selection may account for the fact that our universe has the necessary constants, dimensionality and laws to last for last for a long time (not fizzle out or crunch immediately its initiating bang), long enough to spawn daughter universes (and INCIDENTALLY long enough to breed life). But Smolinian selection cannot account for the fact that our universe is specifically congenial to life, or to intelligent life, or to us. My negative conclusion would break down only if life itself is in the habit of engineering the spawning of daughter universes. As far as I am aware, this hasn't been suggested, but it is, I suppose, a theoretical possibility that daughter universes are generated as a consequence of the fooling around of highly evolved physicists.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Science Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder", John Brockman, Edge.org, December 29, 1996

• “For his purposes (and mine), scientific medicine is defined as the set of practices which submit themselves to the ordeal of being tested. Alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. 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. Conversely, if a technique devised by the President of the Royal College of Physicians consistently fails in double-blind trials, it will cease to be a part of 'orthodox' medicine. Whether it will then become 'alternative' will depend upon whether it is adopted by a sufficiently ambitious quack (there are always sufficiently gullible patients).”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Foreword to by John Diamond, Vintage, 2001.

• “I don't withdraw a word of my initial statement. But I do now think it may have been incomplete. There is perhaps a fifth category, which may belong under "insane" but which can be more sympathetically characterized by a word like tormented, bullied, or brainwashed. Sincere people who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the massive evidence of science on the one hand, and their understanding of what their holy book tells them on the other. I think this is one of the truly bad things religion can do to a human mind. There is wickedness here, but it is the wickedness of the institution and what it does to a believing victim, not wickedness on the part of the victim himself.”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!”

  Richard Dawkins (born 1941) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Has the world changed?, The Guardian (11 October 2001)

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