Richard Dawkins Quotes

I think I'm very conscientious of how precious life is and how quickly life can be taken away from you, especially at times when it can be least expected.

I think we all lose in the end because we don't get to stay here forever.

Every morning when I wake up, now, I regard it as having another borrowed day.

Always, at the back of your soul, there is something that says to you, 'Mortal, drawn from eternal life for a short time, think how precious these moments are.

I think the gift of my mother's death, if anything so terrible can be said to have an upside to it, is that I was always keenly aware that life was fleeting, and that you'd better live while you have the chance. As I say in the book, since I was 19 years old I felt like I was living for two, and when I out-lived my mother, when I got into my forties, it felt like a miracle to me.

Thinking about death... produces love for life. When we are familiar with death, we accept each week, each day, as a gift. Only if we are able thus to accept life bit by bit does it become precious.

Dying men think of funny things-and that's what we all are here, aren't we? Dying men.

I think death is not simply the last few moments of life, death is something that runs throughout the whole of life. Each of our moments is not only the possibility of affirmation, but it's also we're saying farewell at each moment to something.

The only realities in life are that you are born, and that you die. We always think we are going to live forever. The dying aspect we will never accept. The one thing about having this kind of warning is how you appreciate every single day of life.

Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality

To think that so much comes to so little, to think that life is really short.

Cleverness is not wisdom. And not to think mortal thoughts is to see few days.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter. Love and desire and hate; I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.

I used to think the only way to be truly alive is to confront your mortality.

It's more enjoyable for me to know that life is finite. Knowing that, I would like to go to a party.

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

You're pretending this isn't your life. You think it's going to happen some other time. When you're dead you'll realise you were alive now.

We're all going to die; I'm just trying to make it a little more interesting.

We should write an elegy for every day that has slipped through our lives unnoticed and unappreciated. Better still, we should write a song of thanksgiving for all the days that remain-now that we know how to cherish them.

We like to think of life as a constant ... Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat.

Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.

Everything that we love will, at some point, be taken away from us. If I think about everyone I love eventually being taken away from me by death, or simply by getting lost from each other in the world, it makes me value them much more now. And I'm much less likely to be indifferent. For me, indifference is the end of life.

Cease, cows, life is short.