I was taught very early on that the state can be, and is, a liar and a murderer.

We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we're going to die, which gives us a lot to think about, and we have a need for, what I would call, "the transcendent" or "the numinous" or even "the ecstatic" that comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't respond to things of that sort.

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.

A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'.

I think the cultural task is to separate our impulses and needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

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

The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both.