"I guess I’m known as a RINO now, which means a Republican in name only, because, I guess, of social views, perhaps, or common sense would be another one, which seems to escape members of our party. For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you. He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress."

"If you go to bed at night and sleep for eight hours, you’ll have traveled over half a million miles by the time you wake up."

"Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false."

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist."

"Let the good news go forth: we live in a cosmos, the vastness of which we can scarcely even indicate in our thoughts, on a planet teeming with creatures we’ve only begun to understand, but the whole project was brought to its glorious fulfillment over twenty centuries ago, after one species of primate climbed down out of the trees, invented agriculture and iron tools, glimpsed the possibility of keeping its excrement out of its food, and then singled out one among its number to be viciously flogged and nailed to a cross."

"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth."

"It is sometimes said that science has nothing to do with morality. This is wrong. Science is the search for truth, the effort to understand the world; it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality."

"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person’s life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the “wall of separation between church and state,” therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."

"

‎The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.

"

"Power resides only where men believe it resides. It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall, yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow."

"Naturally since the Sumerians didn’t know what caused the flood any more than we do, they blamed the gods. (That’s the advantage of religion. You’re never short an explanation for anything.)"

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand."

"We have landed on a world where the faint sun glints off methane lakes, seen stars the size of cities spin hundreds of times a second, and taken photographs of light from the beginning of time that has journeyed for over thirteen billion years to reach us. This is true wonder, with the power to deliver a dizzying feeling, the craving for which might be seen as the very definition of what it means to be human."

"My job description as I have defined it is to save Western civilization."