Michael Ellis

“The physical absence of the god was the precondition of all religious faith. If the deity was there, self-evident, there would be no need for faith.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Human Traces

“It’s a god-eat-god world.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do. And because of that, I had billions of people on my side.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind