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

Try lighting your house by prayer instead of electricity and see which one works.

And I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.

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.

Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.

Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.

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.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.

You laugh, but you haven’t seen me in a tux. Or maybe you don’t like broad-shouldered guys with muscular chest and washboard abs?

While Asia is commonly referred to as the Gateway to Europe, it is no less true that Europe is the Gateway to Asia, and the broad influence of the one cannot fail to have its impact upon the other.

In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.

And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.

I like the theatre because you paint with broad strokes. To me the theatre is stretching its definition really far.

I knew that it was my only shot to be taken seriously in the recording industry, because it’s fast and broad.

Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy.