Perhaps worse still is what liberal societies might do to themselves in the face of this new and different threat [of terrorism]. They begin, by smal….

Try lighting your house by prayer instead of electricity and see which one works..

Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life..

Religious apologists complain bitterly that atheists and secularists are aggressive and hostile in their criticism of them. I always say: look, when ….

To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits ….

Everybody is entitled to believe. Churches have exactly the same right to exist as a football club, a trade union or a political party. But if you an….

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends..

I despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree..

Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places..

Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccen….

If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end..

It takes a certain ingenuous faith - but I have it - to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liber….

Inculcating the various competing - competing, note - falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal..

Future generations may or may not judge Wittgenstein to be one of the great philosophers. Even if they do not, however, he is sure always to count as….

Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic—that is, he frequently ….

It doesn't have to be the Grand Canyon, it could be a city street, it could be the face of another human being - Everything is full of wonder..

...mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life..