“Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance.”

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

The power of psychedelics is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.

This is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own.

It is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.

The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost.

You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago-and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since-is no one to consult on questions of ethics.

You almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don’t like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.

The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments , and a passionate unwillingness to do so.

Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don’t have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.

The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.

Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.

It is time we recognized that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potential.

We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That’s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or timid.

Through knowledge and understanding, we will drive from the temple of freedom all those who seek to establish over us thought control, whether they be agents of a foreign state or demagogues thirsty for personal power and public notice.

The history of free men is never written by chance but by choice – their choice.

So the world is again faced with the problem of armed aggression. Powerful dictatorships are attacking an exposed, but free, area.

You hear entertainers all the time, saying, ‘If I couldn’t get paid for this, I’d do it for free.’ When’s the last time you ever heard a business person say, ‘If I couldn’t get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I’d do it for free?’

It’s our money, and we’re free to spend it any way we please.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.