“As the journalist Nick Cohen noted about accusations that atheism is like religion, “It’s not a charge I’d throw around if I were seeking to defend faith. When people say of dozens of political and cultural movements from monetarism to Marxism that their followers treat their cause ‘like a religion,’ they never mean it as a compliment. They mean that dumb obedience to higher authority and an obstinate attachment to dogma mark its adherents.””

“When you destroy people's religious expression, they will establish secularized religions like Marxism.”

“We talk about a secular state in India. It is perhaps not very easy even to find a good word in Hindi for "secular". Some people think it means something opposed to religion. That obviously is not correct. What it means is that it is state which honours all faiths equally and gives them equal opportunities; that, as a state, it does not allow itself to be attached to one faith or religion, which then becomes the state religion.”

“Idiots must stop claiming that atheism is a religion. Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power. And atheism is… precisely not that. Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position”

“Never thought I’d see the day when you’d throw your arms around a vam - someone like me”

“Islam is not a religion of peace. It's a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can.”

“The mass political movements of the 20th century were vehicles for myths inherited from religion, and it is no accident that religion is reviving now that these movements have collapsed.”

“The more popular a religion becomes, the less likely its adherents are to practise its highest precepts.”

“They who seek religion for culture's sake are aesthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion.”

“Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.”