But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens (something otherwise known as social justice) and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That can be the difference between democracy and plutocracy.

Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.

What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does.

In fact, so much of life, as you know, is serendipitous. That's why you better be prepared at any time for anything, because it may happen to you.

We don't care really about children as a society and television reflects that indifference to children as human beings.

When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.

Presidents are afraid to lose wars. They're afraid to be outflanked on the right by the militarists. They don't want to be seen as soft on either communism or soft on terrorism or whatever. So presidents are constantly tugged away from their domestic commitments to foreign policy.