Christianity is the very root and foundation of Western civilization.

The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion...Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too.

Liberty is the essential precondition for achieving virtue... In order to exercise virtue, we need to have the ability to choose freely.

...Slavery appears such a relatively mild business that one begins to wonder why Frederick Douglass and so many others ever tried to escape.

Under normal circumstances, if the centerpiece of a president's campaign is helping the disadvantaged and we are our brother's keeper, the idea that this same guy has an actual brother living in third-world poverty without any help from Obama, this would have been on the cover of 'The New York Times.' But none of them are touching it.

Death is the great wrecking ball that destroys everything. Everything that we have done, everything that we are doing now, and all our plans for the future are completely and irrevocably destroyed when we die. Only teenagers live in that state of temporary insanity when they believe themselves immune from death.

The free society does not guarantee virtue, any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success is not guaranteed, it has to be won through personal striving.