“The finest fury is the most controlled.”

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.

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.

Everyone wants to get ahead of each other, and when they cannot, they get angry.

If we choose to be offended when we don’t get our own way, Then we’re going to live constantly on the edge of anger. But if we say to ourselves, ” A merry heart does good like a medicine,” It’ll make all the difference in the world.

People’s Fury is above all the furies.

I love making friends and make others happy. But I also love to be happy all the time. All that aggression that you see remains on the court only.

There is no enemy more vicious than your own anger.

In a 50 mile radius around Chicago one can see the red aura of pain, agony, terror, anger from all the animals being butchered there.

I don’t respect your statement because of the anger that came with it.

People are good. No matter what. Beneath the rage and fear lies a wounded heart. We must do what we can do to heal it.