It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends.

The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.

I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.

Most of the utopian community ideas actually are religious. They're based more on the idea of the monastery than the commune.

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.