The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.

The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.

A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.

You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.

You don't get anything worth getting, by pretending to know things you don't know.

Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker

The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you.

Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.

No one chooses what does not rest with himself, but only what he thinks can be attained by his own act.

What's poetry? It's not real but maybe it's more than real. It's dreaming while you're awake.

For dishonest thinking, however well-intentioned, can only discredit the cause it serves, and must in the long run boomerang disastrously on those who indulge in it.

Failure is in a sense the highway to success, as each discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.

When I wear jeans I want to look like a man, not a child.

I'm a fan or naysayer like everyone else, not an authority of any kind.

Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is.

The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.

When I was a graduate student, estimating and interpreting distributed lags topped the agenda of macroeconomists and other applied economists.