The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.

It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.

Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can't make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.

The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.