Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

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.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

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

For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going.

I don't want them (religious followers) trying to inflict their belief on me.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.