History is a tragegy, not a morality tale.

Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.

[I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.

I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard-or try to turn back-the measureable advances that we have made.

Ronald Reagan said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.

There are many, many discrepant views within the Shia theology about what's the proper role of religion in society or in the State, should it rule now, should it claim to govern people in the here and now, or should it wait until the Messiah, the 12th Imam, comes back and would it only be then appropriate for religious rule to bring about a world of universal justice and vindication.