What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.

If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot live without ... let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded, esoteric doctrine - for if the illusions of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish.

Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable ... People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government.

If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book.

The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them.

It was a new kind of class war - the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.

I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.