“I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

Jesus makes large claims for his heavenly father but never mentions that his mother is or was a virgin, and is repeatedly very rude and coarse to her when she makes an appearance.

The gods that we’ve made are exactly the gods you’d expect to be made by a species that’s about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.

Religion makes kind people say unkind things: “I must prove my faith, so mutilate the genitals of my children.” They wouldn’t do that if God didn’t tell them to do so.

Today I want to puke when I hear the word ‘radical’ applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.

Some people say that without God, people would give themselves permission to do anything. [Yet] only with God, only with the view that God’s on your side, can people give themselves permission to do things that otherwise would be called satanic.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

I learned that to be amusing was not to be frivolous and that language – always the language – was the magic key as much to prose as to poetry.

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.

My own opinion is enough for me. And I claim the right to defend it against any consensus, any majority anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.

The selfish mind is the distracted mind and the distracted mind is the easily oppressed mind.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

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

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

The only difference between a hero and the villain is that the villain chooses to use that power in a way that is selfish and hurts other people.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

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.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.