Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister - corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.

The most important advance that the West has yet made is to develop a secularist moral tradition

My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

All human relations untouched by love take place in the dark

At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice.

We are equal inhabitants of a paradise of individuals in which everybody has the right to be understood.

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.