“To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off.”

Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, ‘Well, good on you. See you there.’

I’m a member of no party. I have no ideology. I’m a rationalist. I do what I can in the international struggle between science and reason and the barbarism, superstition and stupidity that’s all around us.

Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.

Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife.

So there’s nothing more vulgar than the sound of someone saying, God Bless America, someone who doesn’t really believe it, but he thinks it will make him look good to other people. I think it’s the most nauseating spectacle.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.

Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

I’m an atheist. I’m not neutral about religion, I’m hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

To the dumb question, ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‘Why not?’

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation – is that good for the world?

Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.

The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that ‘if English was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for me.

When I broke into professional hockey at 17 I was told that I was too small and too slow and I wouldn’t make the NHL. Now it’s kind of flip-flopped and the sense is I can’t be a good coach because I was a great athlete.

If I break today will you hold me tomorrow and never leave.

The courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior. The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

They are forever free who renounce all selfish desires and break away from the ego cage of I, me, and mine

We can always stick together when we are losing, but tend to find means of breaking up when we’re winning.

The truth of the matter is we have become more interested in designer jeans and break dancing than we are in obligations and responsibilities.

Dream big don’t let anybody or anything break your wishbone. Stay strong, full of faith, and courageous. Keep that backbone straight. And along the way, don’t forget to laugh and enjoy the journey.

I like you here, between commas, where the only thing you can break now, is my lines.