“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.”

Faith enables many of us to endure life’s difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit only by reason.

As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population.

We are all prisoners of our thoughts.

The perpetrators of the Inquisition – the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions – were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God – popes, bishops, friars, and priests.

We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.

Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

Theology is ignorance with wings.

It’s simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.

When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don’t believe as you do.

If you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it won’t matter how successful you become or who is in your life – you won’t enjoy any of it.

If premarital sex is a sin, who is the victim?

It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.

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

George Bush says he speaks to god every day, & Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.

God’s words trump all opinions, including mine, and in the end, I believe God’s words lead to life.

There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.

I’m a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.

I believe that God is not lost. He is in the middle with us right now. If people will take a few moments and take this journey, hope will rise up in their hearts. I believe that.

I am enslaved to my work, always wanting the impossible, and never, I believe, have I been less favoured by the endlessly changeable weather.

Love is never cruel when its true believe me because its different with you.

Believe that you will succeed, and you will.

Believe you will be successful and you will.