God is the celebrity author of the world's best seller. We have made god into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

By reading we discover our world, our history, and ourselves.

Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.

Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in.

Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing.'