We live in a world shaped by the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment...[it] enlarged the scope of human freedom, prepared our minds for the scientific method, made man the measure of all things, and placed individual consent front and center on the political stage.

Four innate sentiments dispose people to a universal moral sense. These are sympathy, fairness, self-control and duty.

I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care

The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy.

Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.

In terms of other functions, we are making a mistake about insisting on a public school monopoly.

What most needs explanation is not why some people are criminals, but why most people are not.