That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don't understand.

Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It's necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society. Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual - this freedom is necessary for the individual.

Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.

Now the ordinary Protestant, Jew or Secularist has a stereotype about Catholicism. It consists of Spanish Catholicism, Latin-American Catholicism and, let us say, a Catholicism of O'Connor's "Great Hurrah." Now there are types of Catholicism like that but this doesn't - this doesn't do justice to the genuine relation that Catholicism has had to Democratic Society.

Certainly, anybody who says, "in the eyes of God," is pretentious.

My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: "By their fruits shall ye know them."

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.