61 Quotes by A.C. Grayling

Christian churches and Muslim groups have no more right to have their say than women’s institutes or trades unions. The government has actively encouraged faith-based education, and therefore given a megaphone to religious voices and fundamentalists.

Dripping water wears the stone which could not be hammered.

Inculcating the various competing – competing, note – falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.

Goethe had long since remarked that nationalistic feelings ‘are at their strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture’.

It takes a certain ingenuous faith – but I have it – to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.

Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.

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

One day everything will be well, that is our hope,’ said Voltaire; ’today everything is fine, that is our illusion.

To lie sleepless with pain at night, or to wake every morning and feel the return of grief, yet to get up and carry on as best one can, is courage itself.