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

I illustrate with a quotation from the atheist philosopher Richard Rorty, who died recently and is, I suspect, now having a lengthy conversation with his maker. Rorty argued that secular professors ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.

Had there been no Plato, the Christians would have had a harder time selling the idea that all God really wanted from us was fraternal love.

There are credentials for admission to our democratic society [...]. You have to be educated in order to be a participant in our conversation So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours.

National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.

All human relations untouched by love take place in the dark