We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes - the gibbons and orangutans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans but excludes humans.
Richard DawkinsThere is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and pointโฆ The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.
Richard DawkinsDNA is ROM. It can be read millions of times over, but only written to once - when it is first assembled the birth of the cell in which it resides.
Richard DawkinsMaybe scientists are fundamentalist when it comes to defining in some abstract way what is meant by 'truth'. But so is everybody else. I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it.
Richard DawkinsIf the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies ... are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention ... The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
Richard Dawkins