Richard Dawkins citations

Richard Dawkins, né le 26 mars 1941 à Nairobi, est un biologiste et éthologiste britannique, vulgarisateur et théoricien de l'évolution, membre de la Royal Society. Professeur émérite au New College de l'université d'Oxford, Richard Dawkins est l'un des académiciens britanniques les plus célèbres.

Il acquiert la consécration avec son livre de 1976 intitulé Le Gène égoïste, qui popularise la théorie de l'évolution centrée sur les gènes et introduit le terme de « mème ». En 1982, il développe cette théorie dans son ouvrage Phénotype étendu puis publie en 2006 Pour en finir avec Dieu, vendu à plus de deux millions d'exemplaires et traduit en trente et une langues.

Vice-président de la British Humanist Association, il est reconnu comme un ardent défenseur du rationalisme, de la pensée scientifique et de l'athéisme. Il est résolument anticlérical et est aussi l'un des principaux critiques anglo-saxons du créationnisme, du dessein intelligent et des pseudo-sciences. Il s'est rendu célèbre aussi pour sa controverse amicale, mais ferme, avec son collègue Stephen Jay Gould sur la question des équilibres ponctués.

En plus de ses nombreux ouvrages scientifiques, Dawkins promeut sa vision rationnelle au travers de films et documentaires, de conférences et de débats télévisés sur les grandes radios ou chaînes nationales du monde entier. Il complète son action sur le terrain associatif en créant et dirigeant la Fondation Richard Dawkins pour la raison et la science. Wikipedia  

✵ 26. mars 1941
Richard Dawkins photo

Œuvres

Pour en finir avec Dieu
Pour en finir avec Dieu
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins: 330   citations 2   J'aime

Richard Dawkins citations célèbres

“Nous allons mourir, et cela fait de nous les veinards. La plupart des gens ne mourront jamais parce qu’il ne naîtront jamais. Les personnes potentielles qui auraient pu être là à ma place mais en fait ne verront jamais la lumière du jour sont plus nombreuses que les grains de sable du Sahara. Ces fantômes non nés comprennent certainement des poètes plus grands que Keats, des scientifiques plus grands que Newton. Nous savons cela parce que l’ensemble des personnes possibles permises par notre ADN dépassent si massivement l’ensemble des personnes réelles. En dépit de ces probabilités stupéfiantes c’est vous et moi, dans notre banalité, qui sommes là. Nous les quelques privilégiés qui avons gagné la loterie de la vie contre toutes les probabilités, comment osons-nous nous plaindre de notre inévitable retour à cet état précédent dont la majorité d’entre nous ne s’éveillera jamais?”

en
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
Les Mystères de l'arc-en-ciel (Unweaving the Rainbow), 1998

Richard Dawkins: Citations en anglais

“Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.”

Richard Dawkins livre The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 2 “Good Design” (p. 41)

“So-called alternative medicine either hasn’t been tested or it has failed its tests.”

The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Contexte: If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn’t been tested or it has failed its tests.

“The genes are the master programmers, and they are programming for their lives.”

Richard Dawkins livre The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 4. The Gene machine

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

Richard Dawkins livre Pour en finir avec Dieu

The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)
Source: Part 1: "The God Delusion"

“What worries me about religion is that it teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding the world they live in.”

Richard Dawkins livre Pour en finir avec Dieu

Heart Of The Matter: God Under The Microscope | BBC (1996)
Variante: [... ] one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.
Source: The God Delusion

“Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”

Richard Dawkins livre The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 1. Why Are People?
Contexte: Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

“The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.”

Richard Dawkins livre The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 4. The Gene machine
Contexte: Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines that who can only learn of the basis of trial and error. The trouble with overt trial is that it takes time and energy. The trouble with overt error is that it is often fatal.... The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.

“What I can’t understand is why you can’t see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing”

that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?”
During his conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, as quoted in The Telegraph, in . In " Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not exist http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9102740/Richard-Dawkins-I-cant-be-sure-God-does-not-exist.html"

“There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality”

The Enemies of Reason, "Slaves to Superstition" [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 00:38:16ff
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Variante: Science is the poetry of reality.
Contexte: The word 'mundane' has come to mean boring and dull, and it really shouldn't. It should mean the opposite because it comes from the latin 'mundus', meaning the world, and the world is anything but dull; the world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.

“It is very good that Wikipedia also gives a page to "Internet Meme". Internet memes are arguably the most important subset of memes today”

Richard Dawkins livre The Selfish Gene

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/276449081746915328 (5 December 2012)
Twitter
Source: The Selfish Gene

“[God is] a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, phillicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Richard Dawkins livre Pour en finir avec Dieu

Source: The God Delusion (2006)
Contexte: The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. (p. 31 of the hardcover edition and p. 51 of the paperback edition; see also: Dan Barker, God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, foreword by Richard Dawkins, 2016)

“I'm sure Obama is an atheist, I’m sure Kennedy was an atheist, but I doubt if Pope Frank is.”

Interview with Bill Maher (2013) http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d2b_1382908273

“The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust.”

Richard Dawkins livre The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

(p. 8)
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2009)
Contexte: Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips... continue the list as long as desired.

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

Source: River out of Eden (1995), pp. 131–132
Contexte: The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. [... ] In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

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