Water, that wonderful, flowing medium, the luck of the planet - which would serve humankind in so many ways, and which would give our planet a special character.

What preoccupies us, then, is not God as a fact of nature, but as a fabrication useful for a God-fearing society. God himself becomes not a power but an image.

Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly ... to revere God and be God.

Beware of charisma . . . Representative Men; was Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1850 phrase for the great men in a democracy . . . Is there some common quality among these Representative Men who have been most successful as our leaders? I call it the need to be authentic-or, as our dictionaries tell us, conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance or belief. While the charismatic has an uncanny outside source of strength, the authentic is strong because he is what he seems to be.

A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services.

Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.

No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.