“Sometimes in life it is a good idea to stop, sometimes it is a good idea to go on. The trick is to decide when to stop.”

American political opportunities are loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.

Faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use.

Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.

My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life.

I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.

Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

Being an atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily, and fully.

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.

The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened.

A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!

Undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance.

Myths are fun, as long as you don’t confuse them with the truth.