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141 " [I]sn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it? "
― Richard Dawkins , Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
142 " There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways. "
143 " Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. But a good first step would be to build up a critical mass of those willing to 'come out,' thereby encouraging others to do so. Even if they can't be herded, cats in sufficient numbers can make a lot of noise and they cannot be ignored. "
― Richard Dawkins , The God Delusion
144 " Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. "
145 " When we look at a solid lump of iron or rock, we are 'really' looking at what is almost entirely empty space. It looks and feels solid and opaque because our sensory systems and brains find it convenient to treat it as solid and opaque. It is convenient for the brain to represent a rock as solid because we can't walk through it. 'Solid' is our way of experiencing things that we can't walk through or fall throug, because of the electromagnetic forces between atoms. 'Opaque' is the experience we have when light bounces off the surface of an object, and none of it goes through. "
― Richard Dawkins , The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
146 " We wanted to be accepted by our fellows, especially the influential natural leaders among us; and the ethos of my peers was – until my last year at Oundle – anti-intellectual. You had to pretend to be working less hard than you actually were. Native ability was respected; hard work was not. It was the same on the sports field. Sportsmen were admired more than scholars in any case. But if you could achieve sporting brilliance without training, so much the better. Why is native ability more admired than hard graft? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? "
― Richard Dawkins , An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist
147 " The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened "
― Richard Dawkins , The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
148 " We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. "
149 " Discretion can be abused, and rulebooks are important safeguards against that. But the balance has shifted too far in the direction of an obsessive reverence for rules. "
― Richard Dawkins , Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist
150 " The habit of questioning authority is one of the most valuable gifts that a book, or a teacher, can give a young would-be scientist. "
151 " If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. "
152 " There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies? "
― Richard Dawkins
153 " It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics. "
154 " Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. "
155 " I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. "
156 " Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. "
157 " The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun. "
158 " By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. "
159 " There is in every village a torch – the teacher: and an extinguisher – the clergyman. –VICTOR HUGO "
160 " I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: ‘When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion. "