quote · Legacy record
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
Approximate author period: c. 1941 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Richard Dawkins
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1941 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1941; activity date not established; Wikidata Q44461, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q44461 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 5881; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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