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

What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world?

One can't indefinitely do for somebody what he is reluctant to do for himself.

In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust.

Ruthless and arrogant though power can appear, it is only ever held by mere mammals who excrete and yearn, and who suffer from insomnia and insecurity. These mammals are also necessarily vain in the ­extreme, and often wish to be liked almost as much as they desire to be feared.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.