Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
We are free to burn the Qur’an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. Let no one forget it.
The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror.
Unreason is now ascendant in the United States—in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government.
The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost.
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.
False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
In my own case, the most inflammatory statements I have ever made are ones that I have written and remain willing to defend.
It is important to realize that our inability to answer a question says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer.
Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
There's no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does.
Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.
What are the chances that we will one day discover that DNA has absolutely nothing to do with inheritance? They are effectively zero.
The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.
Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.
As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population.
I think it [getting a gun] should be like getting a pilot's license. I think you should require training to get a license to have a gun.
What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.
Most of us are wiser than we may appear to be. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow ones own advice.
We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
Faith enables many of us to endure life's difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit only by reason.
I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.
It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
We are now in the 21st century: all books, including the Koran, should be fair game for flushing down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal.
The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism.
Moderates want their faith respected. They don't want faith itself criticized, and yet faith itself is what is bringing us all this - this lunacy.
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
Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places. Principle #2: Do not defend your property. Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.
If Jesus does come down out of the clouds like a superhero, Christianity will stand revealed as a science . That will be the science of Christianity.
[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.
Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance.
Human experience depends on everything that can influence states of the human brain, ranging from changes in our genome to changes in the global economy.
This is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own.
What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.
Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.
The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence.
To say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe.
The power of psychedelics... is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.
There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can compete successfully with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to.
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.
One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.
Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another.
Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty . . . exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the . . . false to achieve primacy over the facts.
Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable).
Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers?
There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality.