"Much DNA in higher organisms is little better than junk." -- Francis Crick (1980)

"The human genome is littered with pseudogenes, gene fragments, `orphaned` genes, `junk` DNA, and so many... pointless DNA sequences that it cannot be attributed to anything that resembles intelligent design." Kenneth Miller, 1994

"Mammalian genomes are littered with such AREs [ancient repetitive elements] with roughly 45 percent of the human genome is made up of genetic flotsam and jetsam." -- Francis Collins, The Language of God, 2006.

The discoveries of the past decade, little known to most of the public, have completely overturned much of what used to be taught in high school biology. If you thought the DNA molecule comprised thousands of genes but far more "junk DNA", think again.

-- Francis Collins, The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine, pp. 5-6, 2010

Genomes are littered with nonfunctional pseudogenes, faulty duplicates of functional genes that do nothing, while their functional cousins (the word doesn't even need scare quotes) get on with their business in a different part of the same genome. And there's lots more DNA that doesn't even deserve the name pseudogene. It, too, is derived by duplication, but not duplication of functional genes. It consists of multiple copies of junk, "tandem repeats", and other nonsense which may be useful for forensic detectives but which doesn't seem to be used in the body itself. Once again, creationists might spend some earnest time speculating on why the Creator should bother to litter genomes with untranslated pseudogenes and junk tandem repeat DNA.

-- Richard Dawkins, "The Information Challenge," The Skeptic, Vol. 18 (4) (December, 1998)

Leaving pseudogenes aside, it is a remarkable fact that the greater part (95 percent in the case of humans) of the genome might as well not be there, for all the difference it makes. ... We are not saying that a gene to which the neutral theory applies has no effect on the body. What we are saying is thata mutant version of the gene has exactly the same effect as the unmutated version.

-- Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, 2009.