“It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, ‘He was a man who didn’t believe in violence, He’s a good man… and dead.”

“Death and destruction are necessary to the health of the world, and therefore as natural, and lovable, as birth and life. Only priests and born cowards moan and weep over dying. Brave men face it with approving nonchalance.”

“It is good that a man’s enemies want him dead, for it proves he has lived a life of worth.”

“I offer no apologies to those whom I may have rendered uncomfortable with my open and honest assertions. The truth is often harsh and uncomfortable to embrace.”

“Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.”

“How do you know when you’re God?” “When I pray to him I find I am talking to myself.”

“Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.”

“Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?”

“If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.”

“The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.”

“Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.”

“[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.”

“My mind is a lock pick always looking for another door to open. I often find those doors by exploring minds of others…”

“The actuality of us being cognizant and accepting of the fact we are but a speck of sand in a universe sized desert, whose existence is irrelevant to any facet of universal function is a hard pill to swallow. Knowing the world will go on for another billion years after death and you will have no recollection of anything, just as you have no recollection of the billion years before your birth is a mind-boggling intuition,”

“Who knew that the devil had a factory where he made millions of fossils, which his minions distributed throughout the earth, in order to confuse my tiny brain?”