Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.

Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.

Laughter would appear to be a physical reflex, although even if it is, this still leaves unanswered the question of why the human response to humor is a convulsive spasm of the respiratory mechanism rather than a crossing of the eyes or a waving of the arms.

Consider the wave of revulsion that floods the average person when he or she hears of the practice of human sacrifice by the Aztecs and other so-called primitive peoples. How savage and barbaric such practices seem. But when a Christian or Jew comes across human sacrifice in the Bible (see Jephthah's immolation of his daughter in Judges 11:30-40), is he or she repulsed?

Civilization itself . . . can easily be swept aside when mob passions are aroused.

Asthma doesn't seem to bother me any more unless I'm around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar.

Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences.