It's called faith because it's not knowledge.

I didn't think Marilyn Monroe was beautiful. It used to worry me. I thought maybe I'm not put together like the other chaps.

Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: 'Don't be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones. People might suppose this was in poor taste.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's.

[Concerning monotheistic religions] The only thing these hysterical cults have in common is the belief that this world will be consumed, and deservedly so, when the moment is ripe. They also, all of them, profess a great disdain for earthly possessions. Yet they pass the intervening time in haggling over the most trivial and paltry property rights, over caves and rocks and disputable pieces of archeological rubbish.

Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam!