I'd be the last person in the world to deny that there are many people for whom faith is - can be a great sustaining force.

I think very few people realize how much the separation of church and state has to do with the fact that Americans are not only more religious than a lot of other people in the world but that conversions are much more common here.

Every brand of religion maintains, and is, a permanent mechanism for transmitting ideas and values - whether one regards those values as admirable or ridiculous. Secularist organizations, with their generally looser, nonhierarchical structures, lack the power to hand down and disseminate their heritage in such a systematic way.

I no more believe in the God of the Jews than I believe in any God.

One of the reasons there are largely Catholic and largely Protestant regions of Germany today is that people did sort themselves out geographically.

hope is not a plan of action.

Whether you are religious or nonreligious, may you find solace in the knowledge that the suffering is ours, but that those we love suffer no more.