On sensitive issues, talk isn't cheap - it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.

Most organizations should be pro-active, but philanthropists concerned with poverty should deliberately be reactive, learning from the efforts of ordinary folks who tired of looking the other way as their communities fell apart.

Philanthropic humility is necessary if a giver is to do more good than harm, but it is not sufficient - philanthropic prudence is also needed.

The data, however, do indicate that Christians who see Jews through a 17th-century lens, believing that most are thoroughly religious, are thoroughly wrong.

Political journalists love graduate student intelligence, the ability to make clever allusions in seminars, and in 1999-2000, they hassled George W Bush for not having it. They didn't realise what this book succinctly displays: that the president has something far more important - CEO intelligence, the ability to ask tough questions, garner essential information and make discerning decisions.

Biblical social scientists have an advantage because they know truths about human nature. Those who dismiss the Bible and create surveys that don't measure crucial factors are the ones who have closed minds. Sometimes the Bible gives us clear answers and sometimes it doesn't, but it always helps us to ask the right questions.

Many American Muslims are peaceful and define jihad primarily as an internal struggle to improve.