[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.

Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well.

Do I fear death? No, I am not afraid of being dead because there's nothing to be afraid of, I won't know it. I fear dying, of dying I feel a sense of waste about it and I fear a sordid death, where I am incapacitated or imbecilic at the end which isn't something to be afraid of, it's something to be terrified of.

Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in the air which made one think - made me think for many years - that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it.

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

It's normally agreed that the question 'How are you?' doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer.

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism.