Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.

Everyone in Iran is perceived to be a child with a paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Sufi elders. They're supposed to be grateful. They can never for a moment not be afforded this wonderful protection. The father who will never go away. The father who will never quit caring for them.

Religion is not just incongruent with morality, but in essential ways incompatible with it.

I don't think Romney is wacky at all, but religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things. Left on his own, Romney would never have said something like the Garden Of Eden was in Missouri, and will be again.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.

In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.