An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, Internet memes are altered deliberately by human creativity. There is no attempt at accuracy of copying, as with genes - and as with memes in their original version.

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

My passion is for scientific truth. I don't much care about good and evil. ... I care about what's true.

No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

I think more than 20 percent of Nobel Prizes have been won by Jews.

Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog?