God like Us suffers the ambition to make a destiny more extraordinary than was conceived for Him, yes God is like Me, only more so.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

A nation discovers its truest dignity when it cherishes the dignity of those from whom it has not heard for a very long time.

I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk.

It is not so much that women have a different point of view in politics as that they give a different emphasis. And this is vastly important, for politics is so largely a matter of emphasis.

It is. But not as hard as farce.

We cannot hand our faith to one another.... Even in the Middle Ages, when faith was theoretically uniform, it was always practically individual.

Flown Raven is the country,"I muttered. "City slave," he said. "Farm boy," I shot back. "I've never even seen a farm." "Don't trifle me with details.

People don't always have the vision, and the secret for the person with the vision is to stand up. It takes a lot of courage.

If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance.

It's very difficult to be original.

I'm English, definitely. I don't feel like I'm American in any way.