“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.”

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.

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.

The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears.

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

I have been defeated; in Christ, I am already victorious. How meaningful are the words, “in Christ.”

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

That’s all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don’t take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term ‘election.’

When I talk to audiences about the size and age of the cosmos, people often say, “It makes me feel so insignificant.” I answer, “The bigger and more impersonal the universe is, the more meaningful you are, because this vast.

life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it’s as though you aren’t there.

the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.

I have not been part of an active counterculture movement, as it is not the approach that I have personally pursued to create a qualitatively beneficial and meaningful impact on society.

Competition in its best form is a test of self. It has nothing to do with medals.