Once the Roman Catholic Church in the West became the church most closely connected with the state, the Roman Catholic Church did not recognize the validity of any religion other than its own.

The forgetting of the history of marginalized groups is both a cause and effect of their marginalization.

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble - in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

The government should not be in the business of funneling money for social services through any faith-based organization

We do want our fellow citizens to respect our deeply held conviction that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth.

one of the great weaknesses of the women's rights movement over the past two hundred years has been the tendency of its history to disappear, so that it must be resurrected for each new generation.

Real-life discussions involve a great many bores and boors who have never learned that the art of conversation demands listening as well as talking.

Whether you are religious or nonreligious, may you find solace in the knowledge that the suffering is ours, but that those we love suffer no more.

The biggest religious wars and persecutions in history occur when religions, each claiming their own absolute truths, come into conflict.

At its heart, all intellectual and emotional life is a conversation, and the conversation begins at birth.

I feel Jewish in the sense of culturally Jewish, I suppose the way Bernie Sanders feels Jewish, but not Jewish in a religious sense.

Situations and Circumstances do not make us unless we let them. Our thoughts and feelings are the music of our soul.

Jesus, what a nuisance it was, being desperate to stay alive.

Man, don't ever be sorry you don't want to kill someone.

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

That's what the drummer is supposed to do. Keep the time. If you can do something else besides that, fine. But the time is essential and non-negotiable.

If we feel that our ministry has come to an end in one place, then it seems reasonable to move on.

Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it

I was kind of a bouncy kid. I used to roller-skate into the sides of cars.

Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful.