In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.

One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism

A few years ago, a priest working in a slum section of a European city was asked why he was doing it, and replied, 'So that the rumor of God may not completely disappear.

Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy.

Unlike puppets we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first steps towards freedom.

If you are good for nothing else, you can still serve as a bad example.

In acute suffering the need for meaning is as strong or stronger than the need for happiness.

Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.

He who has the bigger stick has the better chance of imposing his definitions of reality.

The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.

Religion is the human attitude towards a sacred order that includes within it all being-human or otherwise-i.e., belief in a cosmos, the meaning of which both includes and transcends man.

You are nothing but what you think. That is existentialism.

While some people want to be popular, some of us simply want to be brave.

When I got married, I hired a great choir - the St. James Choir, an all-black gospel choir - to sing at my wedding.

Whether I pound or am being pounded, all the same there will be moaning!

There is no system that is inherently moral if the participants themselves are not.

Spend the next few days preparing for the year ahead: Forgive everyone, let go of everything, let God take charge. Amen.

In the TV business, you've got to write fast, and someone will tell you, "Can you rewrite this episode before... 6 p.m.?" So that's when you rewrite it. You can't wait for the muse to show up.

Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function; living is the functionary.

Crassus was in the habit of maintaining that nobody should be called rich who was not able to maintain an army on his income.

Be wise among the wise, but pretend to be dull among fools.