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" I don't think anyone who genuinely embraced sincerity, charity and modesty could be intolerant or divisive. "

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" When you do the right thing, but not to any particular person, we instinctively feel that we have earned some sort of pay back. Since no-one will do that for us, we opt for self-service reciprocation. "

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" Philosophy has to be enquiring; it can take nothing on faith, and its methods are based not on the blind acceptance of authority, but on establishing truths by reason and argument. "

" The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable. "

" Accepting that the world is full of uncertainty and ambiguity does not and should not stop people from being pretty sure about a lot of things. "

" Nature deals the cards without thought or care, and there is no point in blaming the dealer. All we can do is make the best of the hands we have been dealt. "

" The border between the natural and the supernatural, religion and philosophy, may not always be clear. But there are lines, and we should know and accept which side of it we are on. "

" It is often said that having gone through any kind of suffering tends to makes you appreciate life more and live more in the present. I'm not sure how universal or long-lasting these effects really are. "

" I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible. "

" The reason Buddhism can be so naturalised is because, stripped of its supernatural elements, its core teachings can be giving a sound, secular philosophical interpretation. In other words, it becomes a religion acceptable to the contemporary, naturalistic mind only when it ceases to be a religion. "

" Justice can only be dispensed when you have all the facts in front of you. "

" Christmas is a rare occasion when we are reminded that we have obligations to people we did not choose to be related to, and that love is not just a spontaneous feeling but something we sometimes really have to work at, with people we may not even much like. "

" Trying to keep up with health advice can feel like surfing the Net for weather forecasts: what you find is always changing, often contradictory and rarely encouraging. "

" Atheists should point out that life without God can be meaningful, moral and happy. "

" Cooking can be rewarding when it is a choice and no longer the onerous duty of the housewife, and when a dishwasher can lighten the load at the other end of the process. "

" Untested assumptions and lazy habits of thought can be shown up, once put in a spotlight of a different hue. "

" Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not ultimately scientific questions. "

" It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics. "

" It's not leftovers that are wasteful, but those who either don't know what to do with them or can't be bothered. "

" When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning or changes for the worse. "

" Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. "

" Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice. "

" As a teenager, I increasingly had questions about religion to which I found no good answers. "

" From time to time, it is worth wandering around the fuzzy border regions of what you do, if only to remind yourself that no human activity is an island. "

" Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accepted when younger. "

" Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That's why economics is not the dismal science, it's no science at all. "

" You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the bitter pill free speech requires us to swallow. "

" No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science. "

" Prayer provides an opportunity to remind oneself of how one should be living, our responsibilities to others, our own failings, and our relative good fortune, should we have it. This is, I think, a pretty worthwhile practice and it is not something you can only do if you believe you are talking to an unseen creator. "

" The simplest and clearest motivation for taking animal welfare seriously is the recognition that pain is in and of itself a bad thing, and that to inflict significant amounts of it unnecessarily is wrong. "

" It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient. "