A bigot is simply a sociologist without credentials.

If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all.

For many people, the reluctance to embrace Christianity is as practical as it is intellectual. They want to know what the benefits of Christianity are, or what's in it for them.

I would argue that the issue of God and the issue of science have the same roots.

America is a new kind of society that produces a new kind of human being. That human being—confident, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future-oriented—is a vast improvement over the wretched, servile, fatalistic and intolerant human being that traditional societies have always produced.

With capitalism and prosperity came something new: the idea of progress. This is the notion that things are getting better and will continue to get better in the future.

America is simultaneously the most attractive and most repulsive place on the planet. It is most loved and most hated.