History is a tragegy, not a morality tale.

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

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

Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.

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.

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

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

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

The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

I always notice flowers.

You listen to your favorite song just until you're almost getting sick of it, and then it's so fun to rediscover it after a couple of months.

People tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don't expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don't want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it.

Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It's as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind

But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws So much, as when we call our old debts in At sixty years, and draw the accounts of evil, And find a deuced balance with the devil.

The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

I was speechless. Rare for me, but if anyone was capable of shocking me to silence, it was my mother.

I'm too intellectual. I don't think that the theological vocabulary is as important as the experience.

Growing up in the streets of Bed-Stuy, it was hard, yo.

I don't know how to explain how, probably to my detriment, unselfpromoting I am. I used to have a cabaret act and I didn't even like to tell me people about that. I really hate selling myself.