Richard Dawkins

"The very large brain that humans have, plus the things that go along with it - language, art, science - seemed to have evolved only once. The eye, by contrast, independently evolved 40 times. So, if you were to 'replay' evolution, the eye would almost certainly appear again, whereas the big brain probably wouldn't."

"There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?"

"To an honest judge, the alleged marriage between religion and science is a shallow, empty, spin-doctored sham."

"We are a unique ape. We have language. Other animals have systems of communication that fall far short of that. They don't have the same ability to communicate complicated conditionals and what-ifs and talk about things that are not present."

"We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space."

"We've all been brought up with the view that religion has some kind of special privileged status. You're not allowed to criticise it."

"You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions."