The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

At a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder.

If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine - but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good - and CARES about any of it - to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will - and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.