“I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there.”

The existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their moral choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife, I will give you my piano, one of my legs and my wife.

If I had a religion, its deity would be Audysseus, the sound God, and He would be a vengeful god, dishing out eternal damnation to people with cheap stage monitors.

Empathy is intuitive, but it is also something you can work on intellectually.

Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex wonderfully unfathomable world?

Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be NOT magic.

There are children in Africa, starving to death, and you don’t hear them whinging.

Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed.

To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.

Define yourself by what you love.

It’s an incredibly exciting thing, this one, meaningless life of yours.

We must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs.

Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that the arts and sciences are at odds with one another. That is a recent, stupid and damaging idea.

You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? – Medicine.

Only a ginger, can call another ginger Ginger.

How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?

An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock.

The English language on her tongue became a smoke-screen, without her eyes changing expression in the least.

One of the principles we teach in our programs is “If you shoot for the stars, you’ll at least hit the moon.” Poor people don’t even shoot for the ceiling in their house, and then they wonder why they’re not successful.

Now she hates me. I have taught her that, at least.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business – which at least does us all some good.

Of several remedies, the physician should choose the least sensational.

If for the sake of a crowded audience you do wish to hold a lecture, your ambition is no laudable one, and at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry.