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

Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers.

Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europe. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus

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

Probably no one of us has the True Religion. But all of us together - if we are allowed to be free - are discovering ways of conversing about the great mysteries. The pretense to know all the answers to the deepest mysteries is, of course, the grossest fraud. And any people who declare a Jihad, a holy war on unbelievers - those who do not share their believers' pretended omniscience - are enemies of thinking men and woman and of civilization. I see religion as only a way of asking unanswerable questions, of sharing the joy of a community of quest, and solacing one another in our ignorance.

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.