To all those who I do not know, and who live in the worlds where superstition and barbarism are still dominant, and into whose hands I hope this little book may fall, I offer the modest encouragement...
It is supposed to be an axiom of Western civilization that the individual, or the truth, may not be sacrificed to hypothetical benefits such as order.
Generally it must be stated that realpolitik has been better at dividing than at ruling. Take it as a whole since Kissinger called on the Shah in 1972, and see what the harvest has been.
Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.
In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.
You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as lon...
Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.
Although war can bring with it great enthusiasm and solidarity, it also brings the reaction to these things.
Those who say that I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.
It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse.
Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who clai...
A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the...
I think the materialist conception of history is valid.
The unspooling of the skein of the genome has effectively abolished racism and creationism, and the amazing findings of Hubble and Hawking have allowed us to guess at the origins of the cosmos. But ho...
The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have follow...
Si me convierto será porque es preferible que muera un creyente a que lo haga un ateo.
At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too me...
I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.
To the dumb question Why me? the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?
The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, for which religion used to identify, not just the wrong explanation but the wrong culprit. Human sacri...