How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.

Religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things.

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism.

One can't live without fear, it's a question of what is your attitude towards fear? I'm afraid of a sordid death. I'm afraid that I will die in an ugly or squalid way, and cancer can be very vigorous in that respect.

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends.

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