“People who believe in a divine creator, trying to live their lives in obedience to his supposed wishes and in expectation of a supposed eternal reward, are victims of the greatest confidence trick of all time.”

As for the accusation of intellectual pride, surely the boot is on the other foot. Atheists don’t claim to know anything with certainty — it’s the believers who know it all.

To imagine that “God moves in mysterious ways” is to put up a smokescreen of mystery behind which fantasy may survive in spite of all the facts.

To imagine that God wants prayers and hymns of praise is to make him out to a sort of oriental potentate; while praying for favours is an attempt to get him to change his allegedly all-wise mind.

As for an eternity in heaven – that would be hell!

This is not to say, of course, that there is no purpose in life at all: we all make our own purposes as we go through life. And life does not lose its value simply because it it not going to last forever.

The one function that most gods seem to have in common is to give human existence some ultimate purpose – and, while it is not possible to disprove an ultimate purpose, there does not seem to be any evidence for it.

Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don’t find them believable.

If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people’s expectations, then you can go mad.

You can’t live someone else’s expectations in life. It’s a recipe for disaster.

I guess I’ll never measure up to anyone’s expectations. I surely don’t measure up to what I’d like to be.

I find it really interesting that people are shocked by the raw, natural representation of a woman and a man’s body.

We don’t have a lot of expectations [for Donald J. Trump] because the American administration is not only about the President; it’s about different powers within this administration, the different lobbies that they are going to influence any President.

Americans love marriage too much. We rush into mariage with abandon, expecting a micro-Utopia on earth. We pile all our needs onto it, our expectations, neuroses, and hopes. In fact, we’ve made marriage into the panda bear of human social institutions: we’ve loved it to death.

It’s essential to distinguish between events that are really beyond your control and events you caused yourself.

To live in poverty is to live with constant uncertainty, to accept galling indignities, and to expect harassment by the police, welfare officials and employers, as well as by others who are poor and desperate.