The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world.

Historians will not fail to note that a people who could spend $300 billion on defense refused to spend a tiny fraction of that total to keep their libraries open in the evening.

The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.

Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.

There's something beautifully soothing about a fact — even (or perhaps especially) if we're not sure what it means.

The Christian test was a willingness to believe in the one Jesus Christ and His Message of salvation. What was demanded was not criticism but credulity. The Church Fathers observed that in the realm of thought only heresy had a history.