Most of the utopian community ideas actually are religious. They're based more on the idea of the monastery than the commune.

Religion looks forward to the destruction of the world.... Perhaps half aware that its unsupported arguments are not entirely persuasive, and perhaps uneasy about its own greedy accumulation of temporal power and wealth, religion has never ceased to proclaim the Apocalypse and the day of judgment.

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.

It's the professional deformation of many writers, and has ruined not a few. (I remember Kingsley Amis, himself no slouch, saying that he could tell on what page of the novel Paul Scott had reached for the bottle and thrown caution to the winds.)

Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.