Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife.

We know how to think. We know how to laugh. We know we're going to die, which gives us a lot to think about, and we have a need for, what I would call, "the transcendent" or "the numinous" or even "the ecstatic" that comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't respond to things of that sort.

What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.

The beauty of science hugely outranks the charms of superstition.

It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and holy places so that his hated name can be forgotten.

The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home.

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