“The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago-and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since-is no one to consult on questions of ethics.”

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle.

The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.

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

The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence.

False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.

Let me assure you that my intent is not to offend or merely be provocative. I’m simply worried.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

The power of psychedelics is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.

This is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own.

It is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.

The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost.

You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance.

You almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don’t like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.

The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments , and a passionate unwillingness to do so.

Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don’t have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.

We are trying to urge North Korea to abandon their nuclear development program.

Every day I wake up determined to deliver a better life for the people all across America that have been ignored, neglected and abandoned.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

Families are a kind of leaven that helps to make the world more humane and more fraternal, where no one feels rejected or abandoned.

If you’re sick, if you’re struggling, if you’re worried about how you’re going to get through the day – we will not abandon you. We will not leave you to face these challenges alone.

The Lord does not abandon us! Even if we are men and women ‘of little faith.

I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me.