“It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”

“Nothing gives one a more spuriously good conscience than keeping rules, even if there has been a total absence of all real charity and faith.”

“Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, and so they give their lives to little or nothing. One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it…and then it’s gone.But to surrender who you are and to live without belief is more terrible than dying – even more terrible than dying young.”

“Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another.”

“We are so dependent on one another for faith. We hold faith communally, but there is no such thing as faith held communally but by no one in particular. There is nothing that completely transcends the individual. It is true that this person or that person may waiver from time to time. But at all times there must be someone holding it up. Jesus chose Peter exactly for this purpose. "You will be my rock," he said. And Peter had to bear faith, believe even when no one else could.”

“If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure whether or not God wrote some of our books, then we need only count the days to Armageddon—because God has given us far many more reasons to kill one another than to turn the other cheek.”