Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

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.

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.

Beauty is what you make of it. It is undefined and limitless.

You will not find it in the words of poets or the longing eyes of sailors. If you want to know of love, look to a trouper's hands as he makes his music. A trouper knows.

love the life you live. live the life you love.

Knowledge , surely, is always of time , whereas knowing is not of time. Knowledge is from a source, from accumulation, from conclusion, while knowing is a movement.

A minister has to be able to read a clock. At noon, it's time to go home and turn up the pot roast and get the peas out of the freezer.

We all want to be forgiven. There's a lot of really, really bad people who want to be forgiven but will never be forgiven, and I might be in that camp.

When you’re sitting in a dark room, you can either sit and curse the darkness—or you can light a candle.

In a world full of shifting borders, everything is happening all at once in every possible direction.

What did I do?" he said. "Cake! It's cake! Delicious cake!