People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next.

As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population.

You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

A true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease in the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self.

Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places. Principle #2: Do not defend your property. Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.

It is important to realize that our inability to answer a question says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer.