Richard Dawkins Quotes About Evolution

Quotes about: Evolution

• 

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

  Richard Dawkins

  Health, Theory Of Evolution, Inspire

  Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition”, p.30, OUP Oxford
• 

  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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Health, Theory Of Evolution, Inspire

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.300, W. W. Norton & Company
• 

  It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

  Richard Dawkins

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  "The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

• 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).

  Richard Dawkins

  Stupid, Believe, Ignorant

  "Should Science Speak to Faith? (Extended version)". Interview with Lawrence M. Krauss, www.scientificamerican.com. June 19, 2007.

• When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.

  Richard Dawkins

  Lying, Views, Opposites

  "One side can be wrong" by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, www.theguardian.com. September 1, 2005.

• The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear.

  Richard Dawkins

  Beautiful, Doe, World

  "The Vision Thing". Interview with Sheena McDonald for Channel 4 (UK), www.thirdworldtraveler.com. August 15, 1994.

• Evolution is just a theory? Well, so is gravity and I don't see you jumping out of buildings.

  Richard Dawkins

  Jumping, Evolution, Building

• My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.

  Richard Dawkins

  Feelings, Understanding, Atheism

• Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well.

  Richard Dawkins

  Ignorance, Simple, Religion

  "Should Religion Impact Your Vote?" by Roy Speckhardt, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 7, 2011.

• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Cells, Bacteria, Firsts

  "The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

• The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  Richard Dawkins

  Funny, Sarcastic, Atheist

  River Out of Eden ch. 4 (1995)

• We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Science, Survival

  1976 The Selfish Gene, ch.2.

• There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways.

  Richard Dawkins

  Effort, World, Way

• The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.

  Richard Dawkins

  Years, Justice, Mad

  Richard Dawkins, Yan Wong (2005). “The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution”, p.613, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.

  Richard Dawkins

  Order, Flying, Tests

  Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

• Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.

  Richard Dawkins

  Years, Long, Generations

  Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.

  Richard Dawkins

  Strong, Believe, Religion

• But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that 'evolution itself is a matter of faith' so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Silly, People

• Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. The watchmaker is blind

  Richard Dawkins

  Survival, Evolution, Blind

• Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

  Richard Dawkins

  Distance, Science, Vanity

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.58, W. W. Norton & Company

• You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution.

  Richard Dawkins

  Mean, Evolution, Biology

• Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

  Richard Dawkins

  Mad Cow Disease, Evil, Religion

  "Is Science a Religion?". Humanist, www.skeptical-science.com. January/February 1997.

• Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening.

  Richard Dawkins

  Evolution, Has Beens, Happenings

  "NOW" with Bill Moyer and David Brancaccio, www.pbs.org. December 3, 2004.

• The beauty of evolution is that it does provide an explanation of how you can get complexity out of simplicity. It does it by slow, gradual degree. At no point are you postulating the sudden coming into existence of a complicated being.

  Richard Dawkins

  Simplicity, Degrees, Doe

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water.

  Richard Dawkins

  Strong, Hands, Water

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.154, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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