When you've got Jews and Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus removing graffiti from buildings, or getting drug dealers off the street, that's side by side. When you do that, you take it from the very elevated level of interfaith dialogue to the street level of neighbors. You get them working side by side, and they become friends. Friendship sometimes counts for more than interfaith agreement or understanding. Friendship is deeply human.

We are biological creatures. We are born, we live, we die. There is no transcendent purpose to existence. At best we are creatures of reason, and by using reason we can cure ourselves of emotional excess. Purged of both hope and fear, we find courage in the face of helplessness, insignificance and uncertainty.

Happiness is not made by what we own. It is what we share.

Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.

The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.

A society in which there are high levels of voluntary activity will simply be a better, happier place than one where there are not.

Europe today is the most secular region in the world. Europe is the only region in the world experiencing population decline. Wherever you turn today the more religious the community, the larger on average are their families.