We tend to gravitate towards our tribes; the challenge is to understand the people of other tribes.

India is simply dotted with pilgrimage places, and with teachers and very powerful spiritual guides.

My first intellectual challenge was to try to understand this incredible city of Banaras (also called Varanasi) in India and its meaning for Hindus. That was the place I lived for the first year I was in India and I've been back many times. It's a kind of home to me.

We are built on a structure of the freedom of religion and the non-establishment of religion. That really is a pretty sturdy rudder for the U.S.

There's still plenty of people who have this deep conviction that America is a Christian country and ought to say so in its Constitution, etc. But that's not the legal basis on which we're framed. So the flourishing of religion, of religious diversity, is really built into who we are.

We tend to gravitate towards our tribes; the challenge is to understand the people of other tribes.

There are two great things that we need to find in life: one is love, probably the most important, and the second is work, and they compete with one another from time to time.