religion

"Hobbies of any kind are boring except to people who have the same hobby. This is also true of religion, although you will not find me saying so in print."

"The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation."

"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank."

"Vampires, like virgins or priests, are things that women believe in. We must never fail to humor them in such matters."

"I've got a stele we can use. Who wants to do me?""A regrettable choice of words,"muttered Magnus."

"If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect."

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

"But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on"concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it."

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."

"The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."

"If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts."

"I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer."

"Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God."

"the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger."

"For me, religion is like a rhinoceros: I don't have one, and I'd really prefer not to be trampled by yours."

"It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science."

"[Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company."

"People change and forget to tell each other."

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

"I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood."