“An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God.”

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

Our ancestors lived out of doors. They were as familiar with the night sky as most of us are with our favorite television programs.

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science.

You have to know the past to understand the present.

We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.

We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

This party wants to end multiculturalism and discriminate against anyone different.

Stand up and fight against corrupt rule; take power and use it on God’s behalf. It is useless to think you change things by preaching alone.

That’s not saying that people shouldn’t keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence.

I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.

There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal.

You never know if you can actually do something against all odds until you actually do it.

So many people and institutions are against homosexuals that, as a homosexual, you can’t waste your time by trying to convince them that you’re a good person.

You don’t have to love me. Just don’t leave me,” he said against my leg