For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense.

Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion.

Evolution is just a theory? Well, so is gravity and I don't see you jumping out of buildings.

Such delusions of grandeur to think that a God with a hundred billion galaxies on his mind would give a tuppenny damn who you sleep with, or indeed whether you believe in him.

The less you think, the more you believe.

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Science is the poetry of reality.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

Mere talents does not give glory to God but a humble heart.

Respect those elder to you in years, in knowledge and spiritual attainment and act with love and compassion with those who are younger or less fortunate than you.

Truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with a seat missing, but it hurts.

While living in America when I attended Harvard in the early 1970s, I saw for myself the awesome, almost miraculous, power of a people to change policy through democratic means.

Even worse than seeing women's privacy violated on social media is reading the accompanying comments that show such a lack of empathy.

Pop music should be about young people.

I supply the music for Vampires, which is a new series that's coming out.

The best way to have the last word is to apologize.

Never lose the child-like wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what drives us. Help others.

The text [The Skeptical Environmentalist] employs the strategy of those who, for example, argue ...that Jews weren't singled out by the Nazis for extermination.