Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 32

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• Each step is not too improbable for us to countenance, but when you add them up cumulatively over millions of years, you get these monsters of improbability, like the human brain and the rain forest. It should warn us against ever again assuming that because something is complicated, God must have done it.

  Richard Dawkins

  Rain, Years, Done

  Source: inters.org

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• I think more than 20 percent of Nobel Prizes have been won by Jews.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Nobel, Jew

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• I just would like to say that over more than a quarter-century as a scientist and a believer, I find absolutely nothing in conflict between agreeing with Richard [Dawkins] in practically all of his conclusions about the natural world, and also saying that I am still able to accept and embrace the possibility that there are answers that science isn't able to provide about the natural world - the questions about why instead of the questions about how. I'm interested in the whys.

  Richard Dawkins

  Able, Answers, World

  Source: inters.org

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• You are born into a dangerous world, there are all sorts of ways in which you could die, and you need to believe your parents when they tell you don't go near the edge of the cliff, or don't pick up that snake, etc. There could very well be a Darwinian survival value in that sort of brain rule of thumb. And a by-product of that could be that you believe your parents when they tell you about the juju in the sky, or whatever it might be.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Sky, Snakes

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Race does not come into it. It is pure religion and culture. Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam. That would have been a fair comparison.

  Richard Dawkins

  Race, Intellectual, Islam

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• Charles Darwin made arguably the greatest discovery any human has ever made. He was a man of great persistence. He wasn't probably a natural genius, he worked very hard - even though he was an invalid. He was a great family man, a very nice man. I think he was admirable in all sorts of ways.

  Richard Dawkins

  Nice, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• I think that [Jay] Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Thinking, Winning

  Source: inters.org

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• I'm easily persuaded that a really good novelist who gets inside somebody else's head could be serving a valuable purpose. I enjoy satirical novels that take a wry, humorous, ironic look at modern life.

  Richard Dawkins

  Humorous, Ironic, Novelists

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• Again, it is belief without evidence. In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science, because it was for the good of the Communist Party.

  Richard Dawkins

  Party, People, Belief

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• I think we certainly benefit from social institutions which encourage us towards moral behavior. It's very important to have law. It's very important to have a moral education.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Law, Moral Behavior

  PBS Interview, www.pbs.org.

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• I hope nobody is seriously suggesting that we get our morals from scripture because if we did we'd be stoning people for working on the Sabbath or switching on a light on the Sabbath. So the point is that you can find good bits of the Bible but you have to cherry-pick, you have reject the nasty bits and pick the nice bits.

  Richard Dawkins

  Nice, Light, People

  "Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". Interview with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

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• I think nobody would claim that random genetic drift is capable of producing adaptation, that is to say the illusion of design. Random genetic drift can't produce wings that are good at flying, or eyes that are good at seeing, or legs that are good at running. But random genetic drift probably is very important in driving evolution at the molecular genetic level.

  Richard Dawkins

  Running, Eye, Thinking

  "The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy" with John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley, www.lightspeedmagazine.com. December 2011.

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• We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don't think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we're forever condemned to be irrational.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, People, Forever

  Source: www.slate.com

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• I could easily believe that religion could enhance health and hence survival, and that therefore there could be indeed be literally Darwinian survival value, Darwinian selection in favor of religion. None of that of course bears at all upon the truth value of the claims made by religions.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Survival, Favors

  "Faith and Reason" Interview, www.pbs.org.

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