As I've said before, you can be an atheist and anything you like.

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

Religion looks forward to the destruction of the world.... Perhaps half aware that its unsupported arguments are not entirely persuasive, and perhaps uneasy about its own greedy accumulation of temporal power and wealth, religion has never ceased to proclaim the Apocalypse and the day of judgment.

You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it.

Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish.

I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come.

There is no English surname, however ancient and dignified, that cannot instantly be improved by the prefix ‘Spanker’.