Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The very idea of supernatural magic - including miracles - is incoherent, devoid of sensible meaning.
You can't imagine how gratifying it is to have a reader come up to you and say, 'You changed my life.'
Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.
I don't actually think 'The Selfish Gene' is a very good title. I think that's one of my worst titles.
I've never been the sort of firebrand that I've been made out to be. I'm actually quite a mild person.
False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment.
Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude the He is very, very improbable indeed.
It's very important to try to inculcate into children moral rules, such as "do as you would be done by."
My passion is for scientific truth. I don't much care about good and evil. ... I care about what's true.
American political opportunities are loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.
I did a film that's on YouTube of me reading hate mail with a woman playing the cello in the background.
Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose
Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society.
If you read Islamic creationist literature, it's pretty much lifted from American evangelical literature.
Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it.
It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.
Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog?
There is great variation in brain power all the way from Einstien on one hand to Sarah Palin on the other.
All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.
A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian.
Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.
Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.
Humankind won't find peace as long as we're treating feeling animals as if they were so many blocks of wood.
I don't understand why so many people who are sophisticated in science go on believing in God. I wish I did.
I think a fundamentalist is somebody who believes something unshakably and isn't going to change their mind.
Reductionism is a dirty word, and a kind of 'holistier than thou' self-righteousness has become fashionable.
Of course you can use the products of science to do bad things, but you can use them to do good things, too.
Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.
I don't see that [Richard] Dawkins' basic account of evolution is incompatible with God's having designed it.
I think Douglas [Adams] is writing with an eye to irony for adults at the same time as entertaining children.
Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression.
I'm a cultural Christian in the same way many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims.
To an honest judge, the alleged marriage between religion and science is a shallow, empty, spin-doctored sham.
In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science because it was for the good of the Communist Party.
In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science, because it was for the good of the Communist Party.
We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.
The idea of an afterlife where you can be reunited with loved ones can be immensely consoling - though not to me.
I think there could be a very large number who are creationists by default. Those are the people I want to reach.
Our animal origins are constantly lurking behind, even if they are filtered through complicated social evolution.
Nico Tinbergen was my doctoral supervisor, and he was a benign, avuncular sort of influence; everybody loved him.
The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.
We should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics.
I am baffled by the way sophisticated theologians who know Adam and Eve never existed still keep talking about it.
The usefulness of science is sometimes exaggerated. You'd never talk about music being useful or art being useful.
The book is true, and if evidence seems to condtradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out not the book.
A universe with a creator would be a totally different kind of universe, scientifically speaking, than one without.
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that if Darwinism was really a theory of chance, it could not work.
In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.