Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

It takes a certain ingenuous faith - but I have it - to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.

To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.

Inculcating the various competing - competing, note - falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.

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

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

Try lighting your house by prayer instead of electricity and see which one works.