“False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.”

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.

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.

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.

My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.

You deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts.

If everything was perfect you would never learn and you would never grow.

Never let the things you can’t do, stop you from doing what you can.

We get strength and encouragement from watching children.

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.

You were created to make somebody else’s life better. Somebody needs your smile. They need your love, your encouragement & your gifts.

I lost most of my weight from breastfeeding and I encourage women to do it; It’s just so good for the baby and good for yourself.