People are always asking, "What's the purpose of life?" That's easy. Relieve suffering. Create beauty. Make gardens.

Most Christians are afraid that people will think for themselves; most atheists are afraid that they won’t.

The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions.

The trouble is that neutrality is confused with hostility. We're not disrupting churches, or interrupting people's prayers. We're not fighting religion.

How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost ?

Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.

People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, “Well, are you a Republican or an American?” The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, “I don't have a knowledge that God exists.” The atheist says, “I don't have a belief that God exists.” You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.