I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it . . .

You should never be so involved with your position/job that when the position is gone your entire self image is gone with it.

The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it’s called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine—religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn’t matter; try and do it without empowering women, you can’t do it. The benefits are so many.

Everything is mediated through the mind—translated, filtered, allegorized, twisted, even falsified by it. We are enveloped in a cloud of changing and endlessly shifting images

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious

Fascism is a religious concept.

Religions work for their own aggrandizement – strengthen the church and so on – and they use reinforcers of one kind or another to get obedience and so on from their communicants.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all

I love my ink. They all have a meaning. I’m very strong in my faith, so I wanted to have some religious images. I’ve got Pieta, a Michelangelo sculpture of Mary holding Jesus after he came off the cross, on my shoulder. A sacred heart on my arm. Musical notes because I love music. The compass on my chest is there because church is my compass.