We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
Interpretation
Acknowledging our mortality is what makes life meaningful.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins emphasizes the idea that our awareness of death gives our lives purpose and urgency. Rather than viewing mortality as a negative aspect of existence, it can be seen as a privilege that allows us to appreciate life more deeply and strive to make the most of our time. This perspective shifts our understanding from fear of death to an appreciation of life itself.
In practice
In a speech about the significance of life experiences, this quote can be used to inspire others to cherish every moment.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.
There is no greater evil for men than the constraint of fortune.
By the anxieties and worries of this life Satan tries to dull man's heart and make a dwelling for himself there.
I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world; yet, when Christ calls me home, I shall go with gladness.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
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