When I am dying, I should like my life taken out under general anaesthetic, exactly as if it were a diseased appendix.

All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.

I don't want to sound callous. I mean, even if I have nothing to offer, that doesn't matter, because that still doesn't mean that what anybody else has to offer therefore has to be true.

The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy.

Evil…doesn’t mean doing things that have bad consequences for people. It means private thoughts and actions that are not to “the Christian majority’s” private liking.

Evolution is a very, very important idea. It is the explanation for all of life - a stunningly simple, yet powerful explanation. If you think about it, before Darwin, we hadn't the foggiest idea of how we came into being. Now we do. It's still such an exciting idea that it is well worth everybody understanding it.

There is another kind of altruism that seems to go beyond that, a kind of super-altruism, which humans appear to have. And I think that does need a Darwinian explanation.