I do not despise believers. I find them neither ridiculous nor pathetic, but I lose all hope when I see that they prefer the comforting fairy tales of children to the cruel hard facts of adults. Better the faith that brings peace of mind than the rationality that brings worry – even at the price of perpetual mental infantilism. What a demonstration of metaphysical sleight of hand – and what a monstrous price!

Every theocracy is a denial of democracy. Even better: the smallest hint of theocracy neutralizes the very essence of democracy.

I am a sworn atheist and therefore from my point of view the Talmud or the Koran don’t constitute works of political philosophy but rather writings that stand in utter contradiction to concepts like logic, freedom, feminism, secularism, brotherhood – which are my ideals.

What can a philosopher show for himself? His life. If someone writes a book, but it is not accompanied by a philosophical life, it is not worth our time. Wisdom is measured in details: it is found in what one says and doesn’t say, what one does and doesn’t do, what one thinks and doesn’t think.

I have a big problem with Islam.

I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read wildly, and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas.

I persist in preferring philosophers to rabbis priests imams ayatollahs and mullahs. Rather than trust their theological hocus-pocus I prefer to draw on alternatives to the dominant philosophical historiography: the laughers materialists radicals cynics hedonists atheists sensualists voluptuaries. They know that there is only one world and that promotion of an afterlife deprives us of the enjoyment and benefit of the only one there is. A genuinely deadly sin.

Religion is an irrational construct.

I found it amazing people can think that art must be connected to religion. Religion may give art themes, but there would still be art without religion. Bach is not proof that art exists.

We are fashioned not by our genes, but by our environment - by the family and socio-historic conditions in which we evolve.