Knowing that we are primates, I think, is a fascinating discovery, and a very interesting and rather cheering one.

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.

Religion attacks us in our deepest integrity by saying we wouldn't be able to make a moral decision without it.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

The people who must never have power are the humorless. To impossible certainties of rectitude they ally tedium and uniformity

The role of dissident is not, and should not be, a claim of membership in a communion of saints. In other words, the more fallible the mammal, the truer the example.