Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
Context: The world is full of intelligent, well-meaning people who, for one reason or another, did not attend university but are nonetheless well-read and educated. Out there on the prairie lost opportunities of youth were the rule rather than the exception, and I slowly became disabused of the myth of the Bright Young Thing and have not believed in it since.
Source: The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
A Christmas Sermon (1890)
Context: Christian chronology gives the age of the first man, and then gives the line from father to son down to the flood, and from the flood down to the coming of Christ, showing that men have been upon the earth only about six thousand years. This chronology is infinitely absurd, and I do not believe that there is an intelligent, well-educated Christian in the world, having examined the subject, who will say that the Christian chronology is correct.
Variant: The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
As quoted in Quote Unquote (A Handbook of Quotations) (2005) by M. P. Singh, p. 141
“Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him.”
Man, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
At Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Broadcasted by C-SPAN2 http://richarddawkins.net/home
