If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person's side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument.

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.

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 don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.

[I]f you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don't think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.