1,184 Quotes by Richard Dawkins

Whatever the philosophical problems raised by consciousness, for the purpose of this story it can be thought of as the culmination of an evolutionary trend towards the emancipation of survival machines as executive decision-takers from their ultimate masters, the genes.[The Selfish Gene]

More generally, as I shall repeat in Chapter 8, one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

It is the effects on the world of successful active germ-line replicators that we see as adaptations.

Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

Oh golly, Brer Fox, your forthright assertion—that evolutionary biology disproves the idea of a creator God—jeopardises the teaching of biology in science class, since teaching that would violate the separation of church and state!' Right. You also ought to soft-pedal physiology, since it declares virgin birth impossible

That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: 'the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation.

Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines who can only learn on the basis of overt trial and error. The trouble with overt trial is that it takes time and energy. The trouble with overt error is that it is often fatal. Simulation is both safer and faster. The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have cumulated in subjective consciousness.