You don't believe that the Earth is round only if you're an astronaut. You don't believe Napoleon existed only if you're a historian. You believe these things because they're facts, proved by evidence.

Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.

My thoughts, my beliefs, my feelings are all in my brain. My brain is going to rot.

'Take offense at the drop of a hat' is the unwritten eleventh commandment.

Leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods express a preference for "natural" methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

It doesn't hurt my feeling when I get vilified by fundamentalist religious people. I've actually made comedy out of it. I've made light of that.

It is all too easy to mistake passion that can change its mind for fundamentalism, which never will.