Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time. – Richard Dawkins
The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture. – Richard Dawkins
I love romantic poetry. – Richard Dawkins
Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things. – Richard Dawkins
God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture. – Richard Dawkins
The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no. – Richard Dawkins
A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory. – Richard Dawkins
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. – Richard Dawkins
Evolution never looks to the future. – Richard Dawkins
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. – Richard Dawkins
The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry. – Richard Dawkins
If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists. – Richard Dawkins
But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience. – Richard Dawkins
Segregation has no place in the education system. – Richard Dawkins
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. – Richard Dawkins
Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility. – Richard Dawkins
Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. – Richard Dawkins
I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13. – Richard Dawkins
