True courage is mixed with circumspection, the kind of healthy skepticism that asks, 'Is this the best way to do this?' True cowardice is marked by chronic skepticism, which always says, 'It can't be done.'

The new source of divisiveness is the assault of secularism on religion.

If we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire, we need to teach them what those traits are and why they deserve both admiration and allegiance. Children must learn to identify the forms and content of those traits.

People of good character are not all going to come down on the same side of difficult political and social issues. Good people - people of character and moral literacy - can be conservative, and good people can be liberal. We must not permit our disputes over thorny political questions to obscure the obligation we have to offer instruction to all our young people in the area in which we have, as a society, reached a consensus: namely, on the importance of good character, and some of its pervasive particulars.

When you have an individual that is committed to killing someone else, you can`t expect a restraining order or the police to provide 24-hour protection.

If we are surrounded by the trivial and the vicious, it is all too easy to make our peace with it.

The history of our nation is intertwined with a certain religious tradition, and that the First Amendment was not intended to result in the complete exclusion of religious beliefs from our public classrooms.