A Quote by Richard Dawkins

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. Mindless may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion.

Richard Dawkins

Quote Topics

Box Came Certainly Cliche Contrary Courage Cowardice Cowards Effective Had Helpful Hit Insane Leaders May Mindless Minds New New York On The Contrary Our Pay People Recent Religion September September 11 Suitable Telephone Those Understand Understanding Us Were Word Would York

Quote Author

Richard Dawkins
English - Scientist
Born: March 26, 1941

Some Queen of the Pipes, I thought. I'd believed I was better than a mindless drone. But I was the mindless one, hiding away. Even now I referred to them as if I didn't belong.

Maria V. Snyder

For a President not to have confidence in, not to be prepared to listen to the myriad of intelligence agencies from defense intelligence, to the CIA, etcetera, is absolutely mindless. It's just mindless.

Joe Biden

Women are never again going to be mindless coffee-makers or mindless policy-makers in politics.

Gloria Steinem

Sex is the refuge of the mindless. And the more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in the male "culture," in short, the nicer she is, the more sexual she is. The nicest women in our "society" are raving sex maniacs.

Valerie Solanas

I don't really watch a lot of television, and I would watch mindless, mindless television.

Charlize Theron

World War Z was a great zombie film because those were zombie performances. It wasn't just a bunch of people walking around slow. They did close-ups on zombies who were performing, as a mindless dead thing. They were creepy and scary.

Tom Savini

There were those who loved liberty, who cried out to live their own lives, to strive, to rise above, to achieve, and those bent on the mindless equality of stagnation brought about through the enforcement of an artificial, arbitrary, gray uniformity--those who wanted to transcend through their own effort, and those who wanted others to think for them and were willing to pay the ultimate price.

Terry Goodkind

Unfortunately what came out of it was also kind of an imitation community with a lot of mindless conformity.

Bill Griffith

Time passed. Art came off the walls and became rituals. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present, mindless trajectory, could land those lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.

Tom Robbins

Comedians could do mindless things - and by mindless, I mean the easy jokes and things that you already agree with - but I find it more interesting, more of a reward, for people to feel something. I like to make a human connection, and that involves speaking emotionally, a bit more intellectually, or with a bit more moral complexity.

Jerrod Carmichael

The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipin g mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action.

Ayn Rand

It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half of mankind brave and one cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting; but being all cowards, we go on very well.

Samuel Johnson

The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not "cowards," as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith—perfect faith, as it turns out—and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be.

Sam Harris

Before the word gay had really been invented, was there's no such thing. Only a country, basically as mindless about these matters - based upon our peasant superstitions, religious superstitions - would they make categories. Everybody's everything.

Gore Vidal

After September 11, 2001, I was feeling like I really wanted more understanding between cultures. It seemed to me that so much of what happened on September 11 was because people didn't understand each other and were suspicious of each other.