I think it [getting a gun] should be like getting a pilot's license. I think you should require training to get a license to have a gun.

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

The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost.

To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world - to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish - is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance.

You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standard of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world.

People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.