Top 500 Richard Dawkins Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness.”

— Richard Dawkins

402. “There is something so mysterious that it is almost like God. God is in the equations. God is in the fundamental constants. And that’s fine. I mean, that’s just redefinition of that which we find mysterious at the basis of the universe.”

— Richard Dawkins

403. “Anyone can popularize science if he oversimplifies.”

— Richard Dawkins

404. “Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.”

— Richard Dawkins

405. “No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.”

— Richard Dawkins

406. “I’m not much given to straight, irony-free hero-worship.”

— Richard Dawkins

407. “I am an enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene.”

— Richard Dawkins

408. “There is no universally agreed definition of a gene.”

— Richard Dawkins

409. “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.”

— Richard Dawkins

410. “If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible.”

— Richard Dawkins

411. “But if science cannot answer some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can?”

— Richard Dawkins

412. “There is great variation in brain power all the way from Einstien on one hand to Sarah Palin on the other.”

— Richard Dawkins

413. “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.”

— Richard Dawkins

414. “More poignant for us, at Laetoli in Tanzania are the companionable footprints of three real hominids, probably Australopithecus afarensis, walking together 3.6 million years ago in what was then fresh volcanic ash. Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn?”

— Richard Dawkins

415. “To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.”

— Richard Dawkins

416. “Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil.”

— Richard Dawkins

417. “Given a hundred clones of Carl Sagan, we might have some hope for the next century.”

— Richard Dawkins

418. “I’m quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.”

— Richard Dawkins

419. “Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It’s a sort of crime against childhood.”

— Richard Dawkins

420. “By dislaiming the idea of a next life, we can take more excitement in this one!”

— Richard Dawkins

421. “Next to the true beauty and magic of the real world, supernatural spells and stage tricks seem cheap and tawdry by comparison. The magic of reality is neither supernatural nor a trick, but – quite simply – wonderful. Wonderful, and real. Wonderful because real.”

— Richard Dawkins

422. “It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have.”

— Richard Dawkins

423. “If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.”

— Richard Dawkins

424. “I would like to find a way in which people in Saudi Arabia could learn that they can be something other than a Muslim. Some people may not realize this. Of course, there is the problem that you can get in trouble or get stoned.”

— Richard Dawkins

425. “Many religious people find it hard to imagine how, without religion, one can be good, or would even want to be good.”

— Richard Dawkins

426. “To an honest judge, the alleged convergence between religion and science is a shallow, empty, hollow, spin-doctored sham.”

— Richard Dawkins

427. “We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don’t have to bother saying so.”

— Richard Dawkins

428. “I think I would abolish schools which systematically inculcate sectarian beliefs.”

— Richard Dawkins

429. “Religions do make claims about the universe – the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they’re usually false.”

— Richard Dawkins

430. “I might respect you as a brilliant intellect, runner, musician or juggler. But respect your BELIEFS? Only if they’re supported by evidence.”

— Richard Dawkins

431. “Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don’t know it.”

— Richard Dawkins

432. “What impresses me about Catholic mythology is partly its tasteless kitsch but mostly the airy nonchalance with which these people make up the details as they go along. It is just shamelessly invented.”

— Richard Dawkins

433. “I do think imagination is enormously valuable, and that children should be encouraged in their imagination. That’s very true.”

— Richard Dawkins

434. “The history-deniers themselves are among those I am trying to reach in this book. But, perhaps more importantly, I aspire to arm those are not history-deniers but know some – perhaps members of their own family or church – and find themselves inadequately prepared to argue the case.”

— Richard Dawkins

435. “We should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics.”

— Richard Dawkins

436. “Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.”

— Richard Dawkins

437. “We are a very, very unusual species.”

— Richard Dawkins

438. “A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In.”

— Richard Dawkins

439. “The idea of tiny changes cumulated over many steps is an immensely powerful idea, capable of explaining an enormous range of things that would be otherwise inexplicable.”

— Richard Dawkins

440. “It’s about time we start criticizing faith.”

— Richard Dawkins

441. “In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it’s got the wrong answers.”

— Richard Dawkins

442. “The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors.”

— Richard Dawkins

443. “My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.”

— Richard Dawkins

444. “Though the details differ across the world, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth consuming, hostility provoking rituals, the anti-factual, counter-productive fantasies of religion.”

— Richard Dawkins

445. “I think the world’s always a better place if people are filled with understanding.”

— Richard Dawkins

446. “All the Founding Fathers, whatever their private religious beliefs, would have been aghast to read the journalist Robert Sherman’s report of George Bush Senior’s answer when Sherman asked him whether he recognized the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists: ‘No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”

— Richard Dawkins

447. “Los genes operan de manera misteriosa.”

— Richard Dawkins

448. “I do disapprove very strongly of labelling children, especially young children, as something like ‘Catholic children’ or ‘Protestant children’ or ‘Islamic children.’”

— Richard Dawkins

449. “Compassionate doctors sometimes lie to patients about the severity of their condition, and it is not always wrong to do so.”

— Richard Dawkins

450. “I get the feeling more and more that religion is being left behind.”

— Richard Dawkins