If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.

Sometimes people have said that Islam, in its own calendar, is still only in the Middle Ages. It's still in the fifteenth century or whatever. And Christianity in the fifteenth century, after all, was full of inquisitions and burnings at the stake, and so on and so on. So give Islam time, and it will reach the point of maturity that other religions have. But Mormonism is much younger than Islam, and it's got there already. So I don't think that's an argument that works.

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so but behind locked doors there are usually high emotions running.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. 'Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion.' Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.

If a birth is the fall-out from the explosion caused by the union of two unstable elements, then perhaps a half-life is all we can expect.

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.