Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.

Anything you attend to carefully can bring blessing.

It's better to go into the world half-cocked than not to go into the world at all.

My goal is to create a therapy of ideas, to try to bring in new ideas so that we can see the same old problems differently.

The self divided is precisely where the self is authentically located. . . We all have identity crises because a single identity is a delusion of the monotheistic mind. . . Authenticity is in the illusion, playing it, seeing through it from within as we play it, like an actor who sees through his mask and can only see in this way.

The comic spirit masquerades in all things we say and do. We are each a clown and do not need to put on a white face.

When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.