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

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.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.

We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned by the mounting chorus that demands: 'Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP THAT WALL'.

I think that there is no supernatural dimension. The natural world is quite wonderful enough. The more we know about it, the much more wonderful it is than any supernatural proposition.