If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.

I despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.

Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.

I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.

To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.

Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic—that is, he frequently kicks and scratches at the inside of the boxes, but does not leave them. Neither are ideologies that loosen their grip easily, and people who need the security of adherence to a big dominating ideology, however much they kick and scratch but without daring to leave go, hold on to it every bit as tightly as it holds onto them. The result is of course strangulation, but alas not mutual strangulation: the ideology always wins.