In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain.

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.

How scary and sudden the shift from Living to Dead.

I'm not an agent from any government, even if some of you may not believe it. I'm not. I'm a peacemaker.

A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself.

Having children made me confront my true fears and trust in God many times over in a much more intensified manner.

I’ve always been uninterested in boundaries or quarantines between tastes and types, between mediums and genres.

It's a wise thing to hold back.

No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

I agree to, or rather aspire to, my doom.

The degree to which the opportunity to use power effectively is granted to or withheld from individuals is one operative difference between those companies which stagnate and those which innovate.

I have written too much about lives - I feel I have lived for too long.