Sometimes I think it's possible to mistake desire for clarity and talking in a no-nonsense way for aggression.

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.

A loveless world is a dead world.

In the end, I've found, people like the direct approach. It's much more valuable to them to have a leader who's absolutely clear and open than to have one who soft-soaps or talks in circles.

If worms carried pistols, birds wouldn't eat 'em.

If Iran was a stock, you folks should go out and buy it right now.

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

It does not follow, that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration.

Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.

I wake up every day and I can't wait to go to work, and that's a gift. Not too many people have the opportunity to feel that way.

My music has been a sort of personal therapy. It's got me out of tough times, it has been the friend that I needed, when I didn't have a friend there.

Without Exception, Begin Every Day of your Life with Gratitude.