For the most part, executions happen in obscurity. If people did hear about executions, if they were publicized, even televised, I fear more would enjoy them than be repelled by them.

Jargon seems to be the place where the right brain and the left brain meet.

Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten.

In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.

What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.

Under the rubric of religious freedom, we respect the right to worship differently much more than the right to worship not at all.

Secularists are often wrongly accused of trying to purge religious ideals from public discourse. We simply want to deny them public sponsorship.

Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.

Whatever lessons we take from this dreadful attack (on the World Trade Center and Pentagon), we should never forget that it was, after all, a faith based initiative.

Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.

I don't think writers should write about answers. I think writers should write about questions.

it can't be wrong, if it feels so wrong

Sloth is the failure to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done - like the kamikaze pilot who flew seventeen missions.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

As a nation we should commit ourselves not only to the fight against terrorism, but to economic justice, defeat of the AIDS epidemic and vestiges of discriminatory policies of all kinds.

It isn't. The Book of Abraham is not central to the restored gospel of Christ.

My songs are not pretty. They're what I call optimistic realism.

You can't stay well without telling--and living--the truth.

Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.

I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons.