I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.

Don't look for meaning in the words. Listen to the silences.

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.

I burned the candle at both ends and it often gave a lovely light.

To reflect upon the event horizon is a great deal more awe-inspiring than a burning bush or a wooden statue that weeps or pees or bleeds.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.

We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.

Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.

The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.

I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.