The reading public isn't born that doesn't think foreigners are either funny or faintly sinister.

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.

In the dust of defeat as well as the laurels of victory there is a glory to be found if one has done his best.

Time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days.

I'm much nicer in person than on Twitter.

President [Barack] Obama is a man who had certain advantages because of the civil rights movement.

Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith. Strangers sit in a room together and believe together.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.

I cannot believe there is a god who punishes and rewards, for I see honest folk unlucky, and rogues unlucky.

Let go the things of which you are in doubt for the things in which there is no doubt.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.