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

My favorite time in the cycles of public life is the time when the Pope is dead and they haven't elected a new one. There's no one in the world who is infallible for those weeks. And you know, I don't miss it.

We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.

Human society is inconceivable unless words are to some extent bonds.

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

An individual deficient in the sense of humor represents more of a challenge to our idea of the human than a person of subnormal intelligence

I'd like to prove to other people that it's not the end of everything to be diagnosed with cancer.