The trouble with being a priest was that you eventually had to take the advice you gave to others.

Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.

....to abuse the intellect for reasons of pride, vanity, or escape from responsibility, is the fruit of that same tree.

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law - a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.

One should be embarrassed to speak of God in the third person.

Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes -- de essentia hominum.

The captain looked defensive. "You regard our customs as primitive?"Every society to its own tastes, captain. The wisdom of one society would be folly for another. Who is qualified to judge? Only the universe, which passes the judgment of survival on all peoples.