“I mean I think that when you've got a big brain, when you find yourself planted in a world with a brain big enough to understand quite a lot of what you see around you, but not everything, y...”
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Author detail
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. He was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and was a fellow of New College, Oxford. Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book *The Selfish Gene*, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to evolutionary biology with the concept, presented in his book *The Extended Phenotype*, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms. Dawkins is well known for his candid criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book *The Blind Watchmaker*, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. ([Source][1]) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins
Quotes
Showing 161-180 of 349
“I mean I think that when you've got a big brain, when you find yourself planted in a world with a brain big enough to understand quite a lot of what you see around you, but not everything, y...”
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“George Bush is a catastrophe for the world. And a dream for Bin Laden.”
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“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 s...”
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“I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.”
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“My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side.”
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“You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution.”
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“I'm fascinated by the idea that genetics is digital. A gene is a long sequence of coded letters, like computer information. Modern biology is becoming very much a branch of information techn...”
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“If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.”
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“I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.”
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“The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”
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“We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may pr...”
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“I was brought up in a family which valued natural history. Both my parents knew the names of all the British wildflowers, so as we went walking the country, I was constantly being exposed to...”
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“I was never much bothered about moral questions like, 'How could there be a good God when there's so much evil in the world?'”
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“There's branches of science which I don't understand; for example, physics. It could be said, I suppose, that I have faith that physicists understand it better than I do.”
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“In Britain, Christianity is dying. Islam, unfortunately, isn't.”
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“In Britain, you don't usually learn about evolution until you are about 15. I should have thought that you should start at about 8. But I could be wrong about that.”
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“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 haven't decided yet.”
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“Publishers like a good buzz, and negative responses sell books just as well as positive ones.”
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“Anybody who has something sensible or worthwhile to say should be able to say it calmly and soberly, relying on the words themselves to convey his meaning, without resorting to yelling.”
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“I did not end up as broadly educated as my Cambridge colleagues, but I graduated probably better equipped to write a book on my chosen subject.”
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