I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning. 13 January 1997.

I'm a Muslim. I've been a Muslim for 20 years. . . . You know me. I'm a boxer. I've been called the greatest. People recognize me for being a boxer and a man of truth. I wouldn't be here representing Islam if it were terrorist. . . . I think all people should know the truth, come to recognize the truth. Islam is peace.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions.

Ann Druyan suggest an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid. PBS interview with David Frost (November 1995).

While I do believe in God, I do not believe in the same way as others, so I would prefer not to swear on the Bible. Being sworn in at his son's murder trial

What's really hurting me, the name Islam is involved, and Muslim is involved and causing trouble and starting hate and violence. ... Islam is not a killer religion. ... Islam means peace, I couldn't just sit home and watch people label Muslims as the reason for this problem.

I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have gotten away with it. I'm sorry I opened my mouth. I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I wasn't knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's true more for England than here. I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this. News conference in Chicago, where he apologized for the above statement, which was accepted by the Vatican. (11 August 1966)