We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We,… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random. — 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
Leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods express a preference for "natural" methods of population limitation, and a natural… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
The God of the Old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction... — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
I've always been antagonistic to any naïve application of the selfish gene theory to politics. Some people have attempted to suggest that… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
If the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies ... are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
People who criticize The Selfish Gene like that often haven't read it. The selfish gene accounts for altruism toward kin and individuals… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
What you cannot have is a gene that sacrifices itself for the benefit of other genes. What you can have is a… — 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
