Liberal capitalism is not perfect, but compared to the other 'isms,' it's far superior.

I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.

Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage.

European children are educated in a narrative of human tolerance every day, and if you want to be sure to prevent a backlash, you should at least think of bringing Muslim children and teenagers into the fold of that narrative of tolerance.

In a sense, my grandmother was living in the Iron Age. There was no system of writing among the nomads. Metal artifacts were rare and precious.... The first time she saw a white person my grandmother was in her thirties: she thought this person's skin had burned off.

I call myself a liberal - a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.

But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.