Richard Dawkins

In the World Wars, people were perfectly able to shoot other people just because they belonged to the wrong country, without ever asking what their opinions were. Faith too is like that.

Teachers who help to open young minds perform a duty which is as near sacred as I will admit.

Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle.

There are quite a lot of YouTube clips of me that have gone viral. One that I think of is of a young woman at a lecture I was giving - she came from Liberty University, which is a ludicrous religious institution. She said, 'What if you are wrong?' and I answered that rather briefly, and that's gone viral.

Notoriously, the United States is the most religious of the Western advanced nations. It's a bit mysterious why that is.

My thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings are all in my brain. My brain is going to rot.

There are many very educated people who are religious, but they're not creationists.

Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.

Religious organisations have an automatic tax-free charitable status.

There's a mystical strain in every country, and eclipses are likely to bring that out.

At least the fundamentalists haven't tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.