Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.

If god really wanted people to be free of [wicked thoughts], he should have taken more care to invent a different species.

A celebrity is well known for being well known. I'm relatively well known - but for what I've written and said, or so I fondly imagine.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust.

Jesus is Santa Claus for Adults.

At Oxford one was positively encouraged to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied.