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.

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.

That's what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call "personality", or maybe even "pain".

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole Its body brevity and wit its soul.

I used to be a street singer in San Francisco.

That made me feel good, not to go to a resort where outside the door is extreme poverty

Passion is for holidays, not homecoming.

Be interested rather than interesting

I'm putting my consciousness towards trying to teach people through pictures and sculptures that there's something better in the world. That's what the world needs more of.

A wanton eye is a messenger of an unchaste heart.

Verse is a set of specially related sounds, repeated aloud.

If Columbus in an island of America had not caught the disease, which poisons the source of generation, and often indeed prevents generation, we should not have chocolate and cochineal.