“To ‘choose’ dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”

One of the most repellent spectacles at election times is the pretense of piety on the part of people running for office.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself.

Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.

No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant.

Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.

I’m not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.

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.

Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.

We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.

I’m not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and give them some say in how many children they’ll have, immediately the floor will rise.

The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.

How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.

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.

I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience.

Those who have experienced good and bad luck many times have every reason to be skeptical of successes.

The simple intention to surrender control is all you need to experience miracles.

It’s very easy for a couple to experience joy together. But when you experience pain together, it can lead to such depth and such union. That is when you fuse.

You’re either going to walk through life and experience it fully or you’re going to be a voyeur. And I’m not a voyeur.

And it was a great experience, you know, to travel the world and compete at a certain level. It teaches you discipline, focus, and certainly keeps you out of trouble.

Find your passion and do it totally. The more life experience you get, the better you’ll be at whatever you want to do.

I think it’s time to travel, start gathering some real right-in-there experiences with street musicians around the world.