“Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.”

To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.

The wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world.

Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person’s broad mind and narrow waist change places.

Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.

Misuse of reason might yet return the world to pre-technological night; plenty of religious zealots hunger for just such a result, and are happy to use the latest technology to effect it.

Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.

I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.

Look at the blogosphere – the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration.

It takes a certain ingenuous faith – but I have it – to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.

I despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.

It doesn’t have to be the Grand Canyon, it could be a city street, it could be the face of another human being – Everything is full of wonder.

If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.

…mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life.

Inculcating the various competing – competing, note – falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.

Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.

Like our ancestors, we act in ways that will bemuse future societies.

Birth is nothing without virtue, and we have no claim to share in the glory of our ancestors unless we endeavor to resemble them.

Offspring, the due performance on religious rites, faithful service, highest conjugal happiness and heavenly bliss for the ancestors and oneself, depend on one’s wife alone.

The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today.

I would like to be like my father and all the rest of my ancestors who never married.

Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.

Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits.

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.