"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."

"I usually lump organized religion, organized labor, and organized crime together. The Mafia gets points for having the best restaurants."

"But the truth is, that when a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me."

"God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."

"Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life."

"The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth."

"The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude."

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."

"I am fascinated by religion. (That's a completely different thing from believing in it!) It has had such an incalculably huge effect on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I've thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing."

"We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity."

"There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages."

"Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known."

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

"The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless."