In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science, because it was for the good of the Communist Party.

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.

You see every day of life as a bonus once you have inner peace.

"despair all ye mortals," he said in a voice of doom. "the mama approacheth"

I have suckled the wolf's lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter.

At one point, I said to the officials that you guys haven't called walking for 20 years, now you don't know what it is. When you call walking, you're about half right.

I started dancing before I could talk. Other babies learn to stand and then walk - I just danced.

How much is a chocolate boyfriend - can I have one?

Throw your heart into the picture and then jump in after it.

I don't know how one would define an affirmative-action hire. I ultimately do not know what role race played in my hiring.

Pope John Paul II's press secretary, who said, See, if only the Pope were Italian, he woulda shot back! Never got a dinner!

Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours.