The fact that one can lose one's sense of self in an ocean of tranquility does not mean that one's consciousness is immaterial or that it presided over the birth of the universe.

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.

...I suppose clichés wouldn't be clichés if they weren't based on some sort of tediously predictable truth.

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

The white race will either inhabit planet earth in totality, or it will not survive at all. There will be no in between in our future.

The most important thing for me is the tone, the feeling, the pace. But why I'm doing this is not very clear to me. It's much more of an instinctual thing than an analytical process.

As long as you're running away from a part of yourself, you can't see immortality.

To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman.

Saying that you love is easy, but living up to those simple words is the most difficult thing you'll ever do.

I'm always playing extremes, either the vulnerable girl or the vixen.

One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states).

Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent--all depending on who wields it and how.