The first job of a writer is to be honest.
It is difficult, none the less, for the ordinary man to cast off orthodox beliefs, for he is seldom allowed to hear the other side. . . Whereas the Christian view is pressed on him day in and day out.
Ethical teaching is weakened if it is tied up with dogmas that will not bear examination.
It is a mistake to try to impose Christian beliefs on children and to make them the basis of moral training. The moral education of children is much too important a matter to be built on such foundations.
One of the best ways to improve men's behaviour is to enlighten their minds: and today, against the strong opposition of the Church and the Establishment, Scientific Humanism is attempting to do just that.
This hideous doctrine of eternal torment after death has probably caused more terror and misery, more cruelty and more violation of natural human sympathy, than any belief in the history of mankind. Yet this doctrine was taught unambiguously by Jesus.
I was convinced that, besides millions of frank unbelievers, there are today large numbers of half-believers to whom religion is a source of intellectual and moral discomfort.
You remember when you were maybe five years old and you went out in the morning and you looked at the day - and it was a very, very beautiful day. You looked at flowers and they were very beautiful flowers. Twenty-five years later, you get up in the morning, you take a look at the flowers - they are wilted. The day isn't a happy day. Well, what's changed? You know they are the same flowers, it's the same world. Something must have changed. Well, probably it was you.
I went back to the factories that I worked with at Jimmy Choo because they don't work for Jimmy Choo exclusively.
It's just a matter of understanding what's necessary and discipline yourself to do it.
It became sort of a snowball effect, with guys trying to deal in their own way with 911, whether it was drinking or whatever.