"And if we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"

“I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature.”

“Through the evolutionary process, those who are able to engage in social cooperation of various sorts do better in survival and reproduction.”

“Why is it that an extended olive branch often turns to a clinched fist of hatred?”

“It's hard to be depressed around a ukulele. You just pick it up and you're halfway home.”

Source : "Ukulele Days" by Tad Friend, www.newyorker.com. October 13, 2014.

“If you don't believe in in-state tuition, you don't have a heart.”

“They will listen with both ears to what is said by the men just a step or two ahead of them, who stand nearest to them, and within arm's reach. A guide ceases to be of any use when he strides so far ahead as to be hidden by the curvature of the earth.”

Source : George Iles (1917). “Choosing Books”

“As an atheist, you cannot fully make sense of the music, you have no explanation for the perennial motion and rhythm.”

Source : "We Cannot Retreat To Atheism". Interview with Alexander Görlach, www.theeuropean-magazine.com. September 3, 2012.

“We need to be agnostics first and then there is some chance at arriving at a sensible system of belief.”