In modern Greek history, there is a close relationship between national humiliation and political radicalization.

We are unlikely to cease making gods or inventing ceremonies to please them for as long as we are afraid of death, or of the dark, and for as long as we ­persist in self-­centeredness. That could be a lengthy stretch of time.

Religion is not just incongruent with morality, but in essential ways incompatible with it.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.

Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars.