“I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress.”

“Once you have explored a fear, it becomes less terrifying. Part of courage comes from extending our knowledge.”

“If knowledge does not liberate the self from the self, then ignorance is better than such knowledge.”

“Fanaticism is the opposite of love,’ I said, recalling one of Khaderbhai’s lectures. A wise man once told me—he’s a Muslim, by the way—that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. I agree with him, and I feel the same way. I also agree with Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won’t change his mind and can’t change the subject.”

“Death threats from the ignorant, the criminal, the dishonest, and the ideologue, not the plagiarisms of the envious, is the sincerest form of flattery for an opinionated author.”

“Skeptics,” he said, “suffer from the skeptics’ disease—the problem of being right too often.”