61 Quotes by A.C. Grayling

Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.

The wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world.

I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.

And I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.

Everybody is entitled to believe. Churches have exactly the same right to exist as a football club, a trade union or a political party. But if you and I set up the Church of the Fairies of the Garden, then I don't think we should automatically be meeting the queen, be entitled to seats in the House of Lords or get public money for our fairy schools.

Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.

Try lighting your house by prayer instead of electricity and see which one works.

Look at the blogosphere - the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration.

Nowadays, by contrast, Christianity specialises in soft-focus mood music; its threats of hell, its demand for poverty and chastity, its doctrine that only the few will be saved and the many damned, have been shed, replaced by strummed guitars and saccharine smiles. It has reinvented itself so often, and with such breathtaking hypocrisy, in the interests of retaining its hold on the gullible, that a medieval monk who woke today, like Woody Allen's Sleeper, would not be able to recognise the faith that bears the same name as his own.