How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost ?

If the Prodigal Son's a parable, and if Adam and Eve are metaphors, then maybe God is just figure of speech.

The very concept of sin comes from the Bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?

I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief.

Insanity is believing your hallucinations are real. Religion is believing that other peoples' hallucinations are real.

All you have to do is walk into any children's hospital and you know there is no God. Prayer doesn't make any difference. Those people pray for their beloved children to live and they die.

People are always asking, "What's the purpose of life?" That's easy. Relieve suffering. Create beauty. Make gardens.

If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?

I'm proud to be an atheist - it helps me stand for so much more and fall for so much less.

Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. It is intellectual bankruptcy.

You believe in a book that has sticks turning into snakes, and you say we are the ones that need help?

Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.

To have reservations is to show true leadership. To have certainty without question, to lead people to battle with no qualms, or to prosecute without hesitation are qualities of a tyrant.

I was tired of an outlaw's life.

I never claimed to be the best singer, I never claimed to be the best dancer, but I do claim to be the person that can put them together best.

Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom, have been deemed by Americans not only as their choicest, but their peculiar and exclusive possessions.

My principal battle with the North Vietnamese was a moral one, and prayer was my prime source of strength.

My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.

Home is home even for those who aspire to serve wider interests and who have established their home of choice in distant regions.

We should stop kidding ourselves. We should let go of things that aren't true. It's always better with the truth.

A mechanism of some kind stands between us and almost every act of our lives.