Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.

I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.

I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.

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

One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don't so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it's time to be on my way. No, it's the snickering that gets me down.

Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever.

Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil