“With so many mind-bytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.”

— Richard Dawkins, book Viruses of the Mind

Viruses of the Mind (1993)

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Richard Dawkins322

English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941

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“Be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 176

“By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason, "The Irrational Health Service" [1.02], 20 August 2007, timecode 00:13:05"ff"
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Variant: We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out.