A large psychic void is left by a loss of faith. So many Catholics have tried so many things to replace it.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

The biggest threat to this country isn't the Russians. It's our own inability to make democracy or capitalism work.

What really keeps me going is the constant belief that it could all disappear tomorrow.

We [in USA] have people honestly believing that, if a president calls a war, you have to shut up and sing. That is not the nation my mother raised me to pledge my allegiance to. We should speak out. We sent thousands of Americans to foreign battlefields to protect our way of life, which includes free speech. If you're not going to use it, it's already lost. We'll find a Mussolini who will tell us what's good for us.

Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher.... As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more.... Why has religion become a force just when we'd have thought it would be losing ground to secularism?

If Stalin ever told me to urinate, I'm not sure I'd be able to.