Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a genial host while only slightly whiffled, for example, or to be witty at the expense of one's own weaknesses instead of those of other people.

Religion attacks us in our deepest integrity by saying we wouldn't be able to make a moral decision without it.

I would say that if you don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you're really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.

I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.

I joined a small but growing post-Trotskyite Luxembourgist sect.