Richard Dawkins Quotes

The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals.

I am thankful that all the people in the world who absolutely, positively, know what God wants, usually kill mostly each other.

I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs.

If there are Muslims who believe that they've got to kill Christians to make a way for the Islamic faith in the West, not only would they be disappointed, but it will lead to conflict, there's no doubt about that.

Radical Islam has been the foe of Christendom for centuries.

You think that religion is a thing that is there to help you and to see you through life, and then you wake up one morning and find the entire Irish situation, the civil war that's based on religion.

Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.

The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls.

Because we believe that our ethnic group, our society, our political party, our God, is better than your God, we kill each other.

To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam.

All the Abrahamic faiths are marked by violence.

My father was from Northern Ireland, and coming from somewhere like that, your faith defines you. That's something we don't really understand outside Northern Ireland, but because of my parents and grandparents, I've experienced it.

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

There is not a Musselman [Moslem] alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side.

The end of the Cold War unfroze religion and ethnicity as violent forces…

So many of the people killed in the world have been killed in religious conflicts. There is no more dangerous person in the world than someone who is doing what God has commanded.

The Catholics and Protestants … are occupied in nothing but cutting each other’s throats.

In the Middle East, Iraq, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, and many other places in the world, religion has been so divisive that people have killed one another, believing they were doing the work of God.

My mom told us never to reveal that we were Shia in school. You would find out that some other kid was Shiite, and you would whisper, 'Hey,' or you would see someone at the mosque, and you'd be like, 'Hey, that kid's Shiite!' There was a lot of tension, a lot of violence in Karachi between Shiites and Sunnis.

Ethno-sectarian violence is a particular concern in Iraq, as it is a cancer that continues to spread if left unchecked.

The Muslims are, as a group, attacking people because under the Quran, there is the house of Islam, and outside of it, there's the house of war.

In proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism.

Religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labelling device in history.

Religion has failed us. Christ was not a Christian. Buddha was not a Buddhist. Mohammed was not a Mohammedan. And yet ever since the dawn of history, we have engaged in conflict and war and terrorism and murder and racism and ethnocentrism and bigotry and prejudice in the name of God.

I don't know any religion that promotes violence. It is the adherents of whatever religion.