Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: It gives them something to do.
I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning.
Notoriously, the United States is the most religious of the Western advanced nations. It's a bit mysterious why that is.
I have begun several projects which were never completed, not necessarily because they failed, but because I got interested in other things.
Either Jesus had a father, or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it.
I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.
Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.
To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.
I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.
Either blasphemy is a victimless crime or its victim is powerful enough to take care of himself without any help from you.
There was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful, and which now manifests itself as religion.
The Bible may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals.
Youth, however, can afford to enjoy even its melancholy; for the ultimate fact of which that melancholy is a prophecy is a long way off.
Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder's than any other agency in the world.
We are hated because we are free. We are hated because of the idea that is the United States of America. We are hated because of our Constitution.
Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.
A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition.
A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.
Incidentally, why was it that none of all the pious ever discovered psycho-analysis? Why did it have to wait for a completely godless Jew?
I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.
