We mythologists know very well that myths and legends contain borrowings, moral lessons, nature cycles, and a hundred other distorting influences, and we labor to cut them away and get to what might be a kernel of truth. In fact, these same techniques must be applied to the most sober histories, for no one writes the clear and apparent truth-if such a thing can even be said to exist.

Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.

Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition?"

They don't want equal time - they want all the time there is.

It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys.

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it.