The blind willingness to sacrifice people to truth, however, has always been the danger of an ethics abstracted from life.

Both love and democracy depend on voice -- having a voice and also the resonance that makes it possible to speak and be heard.

Women have traditionally deferred to the judgment of men although often while intimating a sensibility of their own which is at variance with that judgment.

For a man to be a man, did he have to be a soldier, or at least prepare himself for war? For a woman to be a woman, did she have to be a mother, or at least prepare herself to raise children? Soldiers and mothers were the sacrificial couple, honored by statues in the park, lauded for their willingness to give their lives to others.

I've found that if I say what I'm really thinking and feeling, people are more likely to say what they really think and feel. The conversation becomes a real conversation.

Maybe love is like rain. Sometimes gentle, sometimes torrential, flooding, eroding, joyful, steady, filling the earth, collecting in underground springs. When it rains, when we love, life grows.

The blind willingness to sacrifice people to truth, however, has always been the danger of an ethics abstracted from life.