“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.”

If the Qur’an was the word of God, it had been dictated on a very bad day.

The noble title of “dissident” must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

It’s called faith because it’s not knowledge.

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.

Even if I accepted that Jesus – like almost every other prophet on record – was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected.

I have no time to waste on this planet being told what to do by those who think that God has given them instructions.

I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason.

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.

The finest fury is the most controlled.

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what was going on.

The discovery there is no god is a great relief, because if there were, it would be like living in a celestial North Korea if there was one. You would never be able to escape.

We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.

The faithful believe that certain truths have been ‘revealed.’ The skeptics and secularists believe that truth is only to be sought by free inquiry and trial and error. Only one of those positions is dogmatic.

It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.

In both business and personal life, I’ve always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages, cultures, scenery, food, and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry.

Whoever builds his faith exclusively on demonstrative proofs and deductive arguments, builds a faith on which it is impossible to rely. For he is affected by the negativities of constant objections. Certainty(al-yaqin) does not derive from the evidences of the mind but pours out from the depths of the heart.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

Seriously. I’m not playing to prove anything to journalists. I’m playing for myself, for my fans,to make people happy.

This grace of God is a very great, strong, mighty and active thing. It does not lie asleep in the soul. Grace hears, leads, drives, draws, changes, works all in man, and lets itself be distinctly felt and experienced. It is hidden, but its works are evident.

Faith is believing what we cannot prove.

Things seen are mightier than things heard.