“It often occurs to me that if, against all odds, there is a judgmental God and heaven, it will come to pass that when the pearly gates open, those who had the valor to think for themselves will be escorted to the head of the line, garlanded, and given their own personal audience.”

“To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell. And so it is with science.”

“Selfish— a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice.”

“You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still.”

“This kind of renunciation, in fact, has often been the strength, born of necessity, of the world's disinherited, of those who do not fit in with their surroundings or with their own body or with their own race or tradition and who hope, by means of renunciation, to assure for themselves a future world where, to use a Nietzschean expression, the inversion of all values will occur.”

“Jesus loves me! He who dead heaven's gate to open wide; He will wash away my sin, let His little child come in. Jesus loves me! He will stay close beside me all the way; if I love Him when I die He will take me home on high.”