There are not many things finer in our murderous species than this noble curiosity, this restless and reckless passion to understand.

[V]irtue is not news, and virtuous men, like happy nations, have no history.

[I]ndeed, one hears, in early Christian theology, as many echoes of Persian dualism as of Hebrew Puritanism or Greek philosophy.

[S]hame is a child of custom rather than of nature.

For what is philosophy but an art - one more attempt to give "significant form" to the chaos of experience?

[R]eligion arises not out of sacerdotal invention or chicanery, but out of the persistent wonder, fear, insecurity, hopefulness and loneliness of man.

Fear of death, wonder at the causes of chance events or unintelligible happenings, hope for divine aid and gratitude for good fortune, cooperated to generate religious belief.

All science is a charted ignorance and belongs to Maya.

Everyone knew you shouldn't go biting into fruit offered to you by magical creatures in the woods, even if you'd thought until just five minutes ago that such stories were, you know, only stories.

I tend to like to read history - recent history, because I find that much more intriguing than just a writer's imagination.

It's sad when you say a $30 million film is an inexpensive film, but it is.

Ever since Kant divorced reason from reality, his intellectual descendants have been diligently widening the breach.

What is perfection, anyway? It's the death of creativity.

The spiritual activity of millennia is deposited in language.

Give me an opportunity to fail," Saiman said. "I promise my corpse won't interrupt your 'I told you so' speech.

Sometimes it's hard to face your own...life.

I will not give up to sing until the people say it's enough. I hope it will be very late.

The Romans held Britain from the invasion of Julius Caesar till their voluntary withdrawal from the island, A.D. 420,- that is, about five hundred years.