“The discovery there is no god is a great relief, because if there were, it would be like living in a celestial North Korea if there was one. You would never be able to escape.”

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what was going on.

We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.

The faithful believe that certain truths have been ‘revealed.’ The skeptics and secularists believe that truth is only to be sought by free inquiry and trial and error. Only one of those positions is dogmatic.

I’m not afraid of being dead, that’s to say there’s nothing to be afraid of. I won’t know I’m dead, would be my strong conviction. And if I find that I’m alive in any way at all, that’ll be a pleasant surprise. I quite like surprises.

Who are your favourite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.

The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.

Those who want to be offended don’t have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them.

What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.

What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

There’s been some research in cognitive science, I’m told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it’s white noise.

I became a journalist because I didn’t want to have to rely on the press for information… I only read it to make sure of whatever everyone else thinks is going on, because it’s useful to know what people think is the news.

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.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.

Everybody is in a hurry to decode you in a certain way, and then they expect you to adhere to their definition. How can they possibly do that when you yourself are finding it hard to discover yourself?

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.

Greatness is not found in possessions, power, position, or prestige. It is discovered in goodness, humility, service, and character.

Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn’t know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.

‘Days Before Rodeo’ is just the journey of me finding out who I am.