"Faith is like a pickpocket who loans a person his own money on generous terms."

"People have been murdered over cartoons. End of moral analysis."

"Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one."

"By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally."

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything—anything—be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."

"Christians.....expend more “moral” energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide."

"The only differences between a cult and a religion are the numbers of adherents and the degree to which they are marginalized by the rest of society."

"Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious."

"There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable."

"We have barely emerged from centuries of barbarism. It's not a surprise that there are shocking inequities in this world. It is hard work to climb down out of the trees and walk upright,and build a viable global civilization when you start with technology that is made of rocks and sticks and fur. This is a project, and progress is dificult."