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Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins Quotes

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Famous Richard Dawkins Quotes

“Suffering is a byproduct of evolution by natural selection, an inevitable consequence that may worry us in our more sympathetic moments but cannot be expected to worry a tiger - even if a tiger can be said to worry about anything at all - and certainly cannot be expected to worry its genes.”

IfsMaySaidMomentsSufferingNaturalWorryEvolutionConsequenceExpectedInevitableGenesTigersSelectionSympatheticNihilismNatural Selection
Book:The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
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“Scientific and technological progress themselves are value-neutral. They are just very good at doing what they do. If you want to do selfish, greedy, intolerant and violent things, scientific technology will provide you with by far the most efficient way of doing so. But if you want to do good, to solve the world's problems, to progress in the best value-laden sense, once again, there is no better means to those ends than the scientific way.”

IfsWorldWayWantMeanEndsProblemScienceValuesTechnologyProgressVery GoodSolveSelfishViolentEfficientTechnologicalGreedyTechnological Progress
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for 'chaos' implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions.”

WayHardScienceDifferencesConditionsTheoryDependsChaosDeterminedTinyInventionBentInitialsFertileRandomnessChaos TheoryFertile Ground
Book:Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist
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“Quantum mechanics, that brilliantly successful flagship theory of modern science, is deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Eastern mystics have always been deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Therefore, Eastern mystics must have been talking about quantum theory all along.”

Has BeensHardTalkingSuccessfulModernTheoryMysteriousQuantumEasternMechanicQuantum MechanicsModern ScienceQuantum Theory
Book:A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
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“If you are religious at all, it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false (knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan), you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.”

IfsThinkingWellsParentBornReligiousChristianityKnowingChildhoodOppositesVictimIslamAfghanistanIndoctrinationArkansas
Book:The God Delusion
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“The mob hysteria over pedophiles has reached epidemic proportions and driven parents to panic. Today's Just Williams, today's Huck Finns, today's Swallows and Amazons are deprived of the freedom to roam that was one of the delights of childhood in earlier times (when the actual, as opposed to the perceived, risk of molestation was probably no less).”

TodayParentRiskChildhoodDelightDrivenProportionPanicDeprivedEpidemicsHysteriaMolestation
Book:The God Delusion
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“The true scientific understanding of the nature of existence is so utterly fascinating; how could you not want people to share it? Carl Sagan, I think, said 'when you're in love, you want to tell the world.' And who, on understanding a scientific view of reality, would not, as it were, fall in love and want to tell the world.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWantSaidRealityFallUnderstandingViewsExistenceShareLove YouFalling In LoveFascinatingSagan
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.”

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Author:Richard Dawkins
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