The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments , and a passionate unwillingness to do so.

The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.

A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.

You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.

You don't get anything worth getting, by pretending to know things you don't know.

Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker

The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you.

Everyone has a purpose to live for, make yours worth living.

Being surrounded by successful people, doesn't mean you made it.

When you do find humor in trying times, one of the first and most important changes you experience is that you see your perplexing problems in a new way - you suddenly have a new perspective on them.

the truth is that it's far easier to make a bomb than to educate four hundred million people.

Instead of watching the bird as it flies above our heads, we chase his shadow along the ground; and, finding we cannot grasp it, we conclude it to be nothing.

The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures

I wanted to stay this way forever. Which, it turns out, was exactly five more minutes.

I won't stand for censorship, not even from Jesus Christ.

One of the things I'm most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties.

As I ramble through life, whatever be my goal, I will unfortunately always keep my eye upon the doughnut and not upon the whole.