“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”

Our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

When I am dying, I should like my life taken out under general anaesthetic, exactly as if it were a diseased appendix.

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

Such delusions of grandeur to think that a God with a hundred billion galaxies on his mind would give a tuppenny damn who you sleep with, or indeed whether you believe in him.

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature.

We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.

Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything.

Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.

Poverty, disease, sorrow, imprisonment and other evils are the fruits borne by the tree of one’s own sins.

There is no birthright in the white skin that it shall say that wherever it goes, to any nation, amongst any people, there the people of the country shall give way before it, and those to whom the land belongs shall bow down and become its servants.

I was born into it and there was nothing I could do about it. It was there, like air or food, or any other element. The only question with wealth is what you do with it.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

The secret of perfect health lies in keeping the mind always cheerful – never worried, never hurried, never borne down by any fear, thought or anxiety.

The real middle class India that has always been looking for a voice that is its very own. I write about it because I belong to it.

Those born blind cannot see; similarly blind are those in the grip of lust. Proud men have no perception of evil; and those bent on acquiring riches see no sin in their actions.