Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.

Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

Integrity, once tarnished, or broken, is hard to recover.

The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

When fear meets fear nothing good ever happens.

On a hairpin turn, above the dead forest, on no day in particular, a white Toyota crashed into a black Mercedes, for a moment blending into a blur of gray.

The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.

Listening is one of the lesser-known skills that mistresses offer.

I was a dreamer when I was at high school and even primary school. I used to dream about doing adventurous things.

Men of stainless character and self purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

It is not the reporter's job to be a patriot or to presume to determine where patriotism lies. His job is to relate the facts.