For nature is good, an man is 'by nature' good; it is civilization which ruins him

When we talked about Socrates, we saw how dangerous it could be to appeal to people's reason. With Jesus we see how dangerous it can be to demand unconditional forgiveness. Even in the world of today, we can see how mighty powers can come apart at the seams when confronted with simple demands for peace, love, food for the poor, and amnesty for the enemies of the state.

We are thrown together with a sprinkling of stardust.

Some are more equal than others.

...long before the child learns to talk properly-and long before it learns to think philosophically-the world will have become a habit. A pity, if you ask me.

Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.

When we gaze at a star in the Milky Way which is 50,000 light-years away from our sun, we are looking back 50,000 years in time." "The idea is much too big for my little head." "The only way we can look out into space, then, is to look back in time. We can never know what the universe is like now. We only know what it was like then. When we look up at a star that is thousands of light-years away, we are really traveling thousands of years back in the history of space.