I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

In both religion and science some people are dishonest exploitative incompetent and exhibit other human failings.

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by. religion whatever else it has done has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need.

That means that every human being - without distinction of sex age race skin color language religion political view or national or social origin - possesses an inalienable and untouchable dignity.

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

Religion is interesting because it brings out the best and the worst in humanity. It can be a source of good deeds whether it's people from different spiritual backgrounds coming together to help other people in need after a crisis. But it's also a cause for war and bloodshed.

We are pre-disposed for fantasy there is a natural impulse for human beings to want to get off their heads or out of their heads in something in a substance or a drink or an idea or a religion which will comfort them and make life exciting.

I'm still a person a human being no matter what religion I am.

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer but art is very self-referential whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

All the different nations in the world despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life still have one thing in common and that is what's inside of all of us. If we X-rayed the insides of different human beings we wouldn't be able to tell from those X-rays what the person's language or background or race is.

And these two elements are at odds with one another because Freud is utterly adversary to almost all the ways of structuring the human experience found in Western religions. No Western religion can countenance Freud's view of man.

If God existed and if He cared for humankind He would never have given us religion.

Violence against women in all its forms is a human rights violation. It's not something that any culture religion or tradition propagates.

Let us have but one end in view the welfare of humanity and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language nationality or religion.

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty for in it are born our art our science our religion.

Nevertheless there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

My philosophy is that the most important aspect of any religion should be human kindness. And to try to ease the suffering of others. To try to bring light and love into the lives of mankind.

I am not going to condemn anybody. That's where religion gets a bad name when people get holier than thou. We are all human. If my children make a mistake I want them to know it is all right and they should try harder next time.

I am an atheist and if an atheist and a pope think the same things there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion.

People still kill in the name of religion. We haven't evolved to the point where we're one tribe called humans.

In the 21st century I believe the mission of the United Nations will be defined by a new more profound awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life regardless of race or religion.

I firmly believe that the mission of religion in the 21st century must be to contribute concretely to the peaceful coexistence of humankind.

Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.

I try to just talk about human stories and what I think about religion or teapots or whatever.