We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization

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.

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

This is what I wanted to do from the very beginning: write songs and make records and tour them with a good live band.

I just liked stand-up comedy so much. I used to memorize Bill Cosby albums and other people's albums, George Carlin, Flip Wilson.

People, particularly big men carrying big rifles, don't expect lip from a scrawny thing like me. They always look a bit dazed when they get it.

We learn as much by others' failings as by their teachings. Examples of imperfection is just as useful for achieving perfection as are models of competence and perfection.

Being a wrestler is like walking on the treadmill of life. You get off it and it just keeps going.

At best, I think of a director as a magnet. You get all the metal fillings in all the individual actors and crew, and get those filings moving toward your magnetic direction.

Lucille was a darling lady. Probably the finest comedienne in the business.

The abundance of books is distraction

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.