“I am inclined to think that nothing could matter more than what people love. At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love.”

The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy, but of course from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences.

Cost is always an object – the second law of thermodynamics sees to that.

In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.

Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.

It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.

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.

There’s no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) ‘Do you realize you’ve wasted your life?

The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians.

I’ve never been more in love with anyone nearly half my age than I am today. I’d get married in a minute if I weren’t still married to somebody else.

It’s funny how most people love the dead, once you’re dead your made for life.

I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—‘t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.

Love: To feel with one’s whole self the existence of another being.

One day spent with someone you love can change everything.

Love is a naked shadow, On a gnarled and naked tree.

I had all of the love in the world but I could not see it. We are blind when we don’t know how to love the very bones and blood that make us.

God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall.