“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”

My own opinion is enough for me. And I claim the right to defend it against any consensus, any majority anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.

Arguments that explain everything explain nothing.

In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.

She’s got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.

The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not.

Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.

Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.

Ever since I discovered that my god given male member was going to give me no peace, I decided to give it no rest in return.

Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that way.

The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.

The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.

I wanted to paint nothing. I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and the soup can was it.

The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile.

The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.

To love yourself, truly love yourself, is to finally discover the essence of personal courage, self-respect, integrity, and self-esteem. These are the qualities of grace that come directly from a soul with stamina.

Managing the power of choice, with all it’s creative and spiritual implications, is the essence of the human experience.

I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man–the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.

The essence of America – that which really unites us – is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion – it is an idea – and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.

The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.