People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.

The best way to find things out is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun - bang it goes

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.

Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.

Christianity accepted as given a metaphysical system derived from several already existing and mutually incompatible systems.

Man is hypnotized by the glitter of his own gadgetry

The sum of evil, Pascal remarked, would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.