Nature Quotes by Richard Dawkins

By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time.

— Richard Dawkins

We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

— Richard Dawkins

Natural selection is anything but random.

— Richard Dawkins

Natural selection will not remove ignorance from future generations.

— Richard Dawkins

Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.

— Richard Dawkins

“Natural selection is a beguiling counterfeiter of deliberate purpose.”

— Richard Dawkins

Islands are natural workshops of evolution.

— Richard Dawkins

Natural selection is all about the differential success of rival DNA in getting itself transmitted vertically in the species archives.

— Richard Dawkins

From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh…

— Richard Dawkins

The physicist's problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist's problem is the problem of complexity.

— Richard Dawkins

For me, the level at which natural selection causes the phenomenon of adaptation is the level of the replicator - the gene.

— Richard Dawkins

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

— Richard Dawkins

Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.

— Richard Dawkins

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

— Richard Dawkins

“If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect…

— Richard Dawkins

The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on…

— Richard Dawkins

I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as…

— Richard Dawkins

All qualified physicists, biologists, cosmologists and geologists agree, on the basis of massive, mutually corroborating evidence, that the earth's age is at…

— Richard Dawkins

“Our consciousness is also raised by the cruelty and wastefulness of natural selection. Predators seem beautifully ‘designed’ to catch prey animals, while…

— Richard Dawkins

[Jay] Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life. Because I do believe in…

— Richard Dawkins

If you're willing to answer yes to a God outside of nature, then there's nothing inconsistent with God on rare occasions choosing…

— Richard Dawkins

Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that…

— Richard Dawkins

“The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no…

— Richard Dawkins

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation forthe existence and apparently…

— Richard Dawkins

There's a natural tendency for children to, in some sense, inherit the cultural values of their parents. I'm not against that, that's…

— Richard Dawkins

We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We…

— Richard Dawkins

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with…

— Richard Dawkins

“Religion, is a mistake of geography. If you where born in America you are Christan, if you where born in the middle…

— Richard Dawkins

“Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is…

— Richard Dawkins

“Pantheists don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for…

— Richard Dawkins

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes…

— Richard Dawkins

“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes…

— Richard Dawkins

“Let us remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of…

— Richard Dawkins

“Evolution by natural selection is the explanation for why we exist. It is not something to guide our lives in our own…

— Richard Dawkins

“Natural selection is not only a parsimonious, plausible and elegant solution; it is the only workable alternative to chance that has ever…

— Richard Dawkins

Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to…

— Richard Dawkins

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

— Richard Dawkins

[If] there is mercy in nature, it is accidental. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.

— Richard Dawkins

...there are no natural borderlines in evolution. The illusion of a borderline is created by the fact that the evolutionary intermediates happen…

— Richard Dawkins

As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.

— Richard Dawkins