As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems.

The feminist anti-pornography movement, no less than the feminist movement of a century ago, encourages the assumption that male and female sexuality, and possibly morality, are as unlike as yin and yang.

The nation was not founded by habitual groupthinkers. But it stands a fair chance of being destroyed by them.

Roman Catholicism: a hundred million people bowing down before a flesh-hating, elderly celibate.

If there is no God or no evidence of God and certainly no evidence of a very morally engaged god, then whatever has to be done has to be done by us.

From an entertainment point of view, the Solar System has been a bust. None of the planets turns out to have any real-estate potential, and most of them are probably even useless for filming Dune sequels.

The urge to transform one's appearance, to dance outdoors, to mock the powerful and embrace perfect strangers is not easy to suppress." --Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets, 260.