Religion divides us, while it is our human characteristics that bind us to each other.

A theory is scientific only if it can be disproved. But the moment you try to cover absolutely everything the chances are that you cover nothing.

The kind of lecture which I have been so kindly invited to give, and which now appears in book form, gives one a rare opportunity to allow the bees in one's bonnet to buzz even more noisily than usual.

Sometimes I am a little unkind to all my many friends in education ... by saying that from the time it learns to talk every child makes a dreadful nuisance of itself by asking 'Why?'. To stop this nuisance society has invented a marvellous system called education which, for the majority of people, brings to an end their desire to ask that question. The few failures of this system are known as scientists.

[Science doesn't deal with facts; indeed] fact is an emotion-loaded word for which there is little place in scientific debate.

... an opportunity to allow the bees in one's bonnet to buzz even more noisily than usual.

Our humanist attitude should therefore throughout be to stress what we all have in common with each other and relegate quarrelsome religion to the private domain where it can do [less] harm.