“In some strange way, any new fact or insight that I may have found has not seemed to me as a discovery of mine, but rather something that had always been there and that I had chanced to pick up.”

“I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist.”

“There is only one God and all atheists will learn that after their deaths”

“Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness...”

“Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most i...”

“Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.”

“If there's a God out there, then i would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork.”

“I had a standing agreement with god. I'd agree to believe in him, barely, so long as he let me sleep in on Sundays.”

“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”

“I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color and solitude, of course...”

“It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mu...”