Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
For me, the level at which natural selection causes the phenomenon of adaptation is the level of the replicator - the gene. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
If there are other worlds elsewhere in the universe, I would conjecture they are governed by the same laws of natural selection. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Why did humans lose their body hair? Why did they start walking on their hind legs? Why did they develop big brains?… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
People will say, "You're never going to convince me that something as complicated as an eye could come about by sheer chance."… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
“The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
The interesting question would be whether there's a Darwinian process, a kind of selection process whereby some memes are more likely to… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence, but the existence of life and… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, 'I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection.' I have… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation forthe existence and apparently… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
We should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Natural selection will not remove ignorance from future generations. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Natural selection is all about the differential success of rival DNA in getting itself transmitted vertically in the species archives. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
The rule of thumb based into the brain by natural selection would not have been, Be nice to your kin and be… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense,… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it.… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
“Selection has favoured genes that cooperate with others. In the fierce competition for scarce resources, in the relentless struggle to eat other… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
There is economics in biology, nothing is free, everything has to be paid for, there are costs as well as benefits to… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Nowadays theologians aren't quite so straightforward as Paley. They don't point to complex living mechanisms and say that they are self-evidently designed… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
I could easily believe that religion could enhance health and hence survival, and that therefore there could be indeed be literally Darwinian… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Granted, we may try to help our own family members because they share our DNA. Or help someone else in expectation that… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Suffering is a byproduct of evolution by natural selection, an inevitable consequence that may worry us in our more sympathetic moments but… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view.… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Time and again, my sociobiological colleagues have upbraided me as a turncoat, because I will not agree with them that the ultimate… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull', and it really shouldn't - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
“The fundamentalist Kurt Wise proclaims that all the evidence in the universe would not change his mind. The true scientist, however passionately he may… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
“I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Religions do make claims about the universe--the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
“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,… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
The recurrent laryngeal nerve - which runs from the head to the voice box - goes all the way down into the chest, loops… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
The Roman Catholic Church is an institution for whose gains the phrase "ill-gotten" might have been specially invented. And of all its money-making rip-offs,… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
What's going to happen when I die? I may be buried, or I may be cremated, I may give my body to science. I… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
