“Our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.”

The majority of children born into the world tend to inherit the beliefs of their parents, and that to me is one of the most regrettable facts of them all.

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

I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.

You can make some inferences about a man’s character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.

Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.

Let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.

The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.

We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realize that we are apes.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

The chicken is only an egg’s way for making another egg.

Why, I can’t help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself.

Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private revelation.

Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation.

The first 30 minutes of your day are the most important ones. How you choose to spend them decides your day.

Be so good, they feel bad for not choosing you.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.

Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you’re thinking or feeling unless you share it.

Some relationship will end when you choose yourself.

Choose actions over excuses.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.