Richard Dawkins Quotes

Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honoured.

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.

We are being challenged by Islam these years. There are some things for which one should display no tolerance. And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction.

The Taliban's acts of cultural vandalism - the most infamous being the destruction of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas - had a devastating effect on Afghan culture and the artistic scene. The Taliban burned countless films, VCRs, music tapes, books, and paintings. They jailed filmmakers, musicians, painters, and sculptors.

I'm not myself religious but have no wish to insult or denigrate those who are.

The Buddhas had to be destroyed by the Taliban to get the world thinking about Afghanistan.

We have destroyed 80 percent of the statues. There is only small amount left and we will destroy that soon.

In fact, the U.S. military has bent over backwards to respect the religious beliefs of some very dangerous fanatics who want to kill us.

I'm afraid I don't believe there is such a thing as blasphemy, just outrage from those insecure in their own faith.

She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.

For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.

I'm an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don't believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, 'Are we Jewish?' or 'Are we Catholic?' I say, 'Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?'

I'd be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn't believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don't think it does.

I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time [his grandchildren are] my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.

As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers

I'm not an atheist. I do have faith in God. I do not judge people for their faith. I judge people who use religion to hurt people. I don't believe in a religion that shuns people for their beliefs, or that you should hurt people for their beliefs.

They decided the mummy would be unwrapped, for the titillation of the ladies, just after dinner.

I believe in a higher power. I've seen and been around people who are very extreme with their faith and pointing fingers and going, "You shouldn't do that because it's a sin against God." It's like, you know what? We're people. We're human beings. We're fallible. We have faults.

No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?

Peoples of Egypt , you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights!

Imagine going to the holy land in Israel, whether you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, and start carving up the mountain of Zion. It's an insult to our entire being. It's bad enough getting four white faces carved in up there [on Mount Rushmore], the shrine of hypocrisy.

Above all, India is the land of religion.

It seems to me that the dedication of a library is an act of faith. To bring together the resources of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. it must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.

I want to thank you, especially those people who are agnostic or atheist. I don't mean any offense by the things I said of the spirit world. Thank you for allowing me to speak about the spiritual, because I can't talk about my life or writing without mentioning that.