“The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.”

Today I want to puke when I hear the word ‘radical’ applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.

Some people say that without God, people would give themselves permission to do anything. [Yet] only with God, only with the view that God’s on your side, can people give themselves permission to do things that otherwise would be called satanic.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

I learned that to be amusing was not to be frivolous and that language – always the language – was the magic key as much to prose as to poetry.

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.

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.

I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

I dont have big anxieties. I wish I did. Id be much more interesting.

To be in harmony with the wholeness of things is not to have anxiety over imperfections.

Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.

Most men, however brave, have some anxiety or fear in them.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

My ability to turn good news into anxiety is rivaled only by my ability to turn anxiety into chin acne.