One of my professors said to me once, "Any god that can be killed off will be killed, but if I can shake up your faith in your god, it means you already don't have much of a god."

...secular journalists... tend to accept uncritically the oft - repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti - gay. If these people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also pro - slavery and anti - women.

We began to temper Western democracy with what I'd call a social contract. We put in Social Security, graduated income tax, workers' compensation. We developed strong unions to negotiate with business owners so workers got an equitable share of the profits.

You can't have a world where 50 percent of the people are dieting and 50 percent of the people are starving if you want stability.

Men didn't like to empty bedpans, so we made women nurses. Then men didn't like to do the administrative stuff, so women were allowed to become secretaries. That's the way they entered the work force. Then we began to educate them because they had to be educated. But it wasn't until after World War II that most of the great universities of this country became coeducational.

The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.

...death is ultimately a dimension of life through which we journey into timelessness.