Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.

[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.

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.

[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.

You have to choose your future regrets.

It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.