Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.

The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.

We are all prisoners of our thoughts.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

To not believe in God is to know that it falls to us to make the world a better place.

Theology is ignorance with wings.

We do not know what awaits each of us after death, but we know that we will die. Clearly, it must be possible to live ethically-with a genuine concern for the happiness of other sentient beings-without presuming to know things about which we are patently ignorant. Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?