God Delusion Quotes - Page 2

• There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

  Richard Dawkins

  Respect, Atheist, Learning

  Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, April 15, 1992.

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• This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

  John Adams

  Religious, Atheist, If There Is A God

  John Adams, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams”

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• So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Father, Science

  Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, April 15, 1992.

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• Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Atheist, Faith Religion

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.82, Courier Corporation

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• Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Religious, Atheist, People

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• I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it.

  A.J. Ayer

  Atheist, Believe, Thinking

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• Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Philosophical, Thought Provoking

  Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition”, p.9, OUP Oxford

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• Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are ‘valid,’ let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Mind, Different

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• 

  Be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out.

  Groucho Marx

  Fall, Brain, Open Minded

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• The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.

  Richard Dawkins

  Faith, Religious, Liberty

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Men, Ideas

  Thomas Jefferson (1964). “The Jefferson Bible: With the Annotated Commentaries on Religion of Thomas Jefferson”

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• We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Respect, Religious

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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• A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Simple, People

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.184, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses.

  Albert Einstein

  Atheist, Science, Expression

  "Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear" by James Randerson, www.theguardian.com. May 13, 2008.

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• The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all species are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

  Richard Dawkins

  Running, Animal, Years

  "River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1995.

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• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Science, People, Religion

  "Has the world changed?". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2001.

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• 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.

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• No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.

  George H. W. Bush

  Atheist, Hatred, Scary

  Campaign press conference at O'Hare Airport, Chicago, August 27, 1987.

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• We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.

  Richard Dawkins

  Light, People, Lucky

  Unweaving the Rainbow ch. 1 (1998)

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• There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.

  Richard Dawkins

  Real, World, Reality

  "The Enemies of Reason". Documentary, 2007.

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• Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

  Richard Dawkins

  Selfish, Generosity, Design

  The Selfish Gene ch. 1 (1976)

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• I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.

  Richard Dawkins

  Understanding, Humanity, Alive

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.420, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

  Terry Eagleton

  Book, Ideas, Bird

  "This milquetoast consensus is unnerved by radical faith" by Tristram Hunt, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2007.

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• 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

  World, Details, Culture

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.194, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religion, Atheism, Libertarian

  Thomas Jefferson (1939). “Democracy”

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