“Take the risk of thinking for yourself.”

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.

Arguments that explain everything explain nothing.

In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.

We need to fall, and we need to be aware of it; for if we did not fall, we should not know how weak and wretched we are of ourselves, nor should we know our Maker’s marvellous love so fully.

Everything which originates from pure love is lit with the radiance of beauty.

The man who gets me is getting one hell of a woman.

The biggest (and hardest) lesson I’ve learned in life is that the external world is just a reflection of the world within.

Teach young girls that their beauty is only a fraction of who they are.

That sure kind of love, where jealousy has no resting place, and doubt has no home.

Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved.

You tasted like forever in temporary moments.