“It’s a no win situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity.”

Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species – us.

There are no good reasons to believe in god.

AI makes philosophy honest.

Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible.

Philosophers’ Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.

There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.

A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library.

Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.

Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.

Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.

True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don’t have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things.

Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.

We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.

I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.

If you mind criticism, I think you can’t protect people’s lives.

We’re fragile, fragmented souls who are very sensitive to criticism.

Most of my critics don’t even listen to me; they are clueless. They just go to Web sites that report what I say out of context.

Critics haven’t taught me my cricket, and they don’t know what my body and mind are up to.

Art is to look at not to criticize.

Paranoiac-critical activity makes the world of delirium pass onto the plane of reality.

The money can be a hindrance to someone like me because the danger is that you start thinking, ‘Is that a $20 million take?’ That kind of thing, and being self-critical.

Don’t criticize that man unless you have walked in his shoes.