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

And I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.

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

Everybody is entitled to believe. Churches have exactly the same right to exist as a football club, a trade union or a political party. But if you and I set up the Church of the Fairies of the Garden, then I don't think we should automatically be meeting the queen, be entitled to seats in the House of Lords or get public money for our fairy schools.

Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.

The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears.

Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.