We believe that only government has the capacity--not to mention the political and moral responsibility--to promote the general welfare. Father Kramer as quoted in Sweet Charity?

Charity is one of those remarkable words that helps to identify the fault lines of a culture.

Charity erodes the cultural prerequisites for a vigorous democracy.

By defining the problem as "hunger, " the emergency food system is helping to direct our attention away from the more fundamental problem of poverty, and the even more basic problem of inequality.

Does this world feel like hell to you? Of course it does, because it is.

My mother is a poem that I could never write for she deserves multitudes

Do you think the Bible is accurate? I mean, do you think it's real?" " I think Pastor Calvin is hot. In a fortysomething way. That pretty much sums up my religious conviction

Mathematics, in the development of its ideas, has only to take account of the immanent reality of its concepts and has absolutely no obligation to examine their transient reality.

The gleam in their eyes telegraphs only too clearly that they are hoping for a headline, which of course means something disparaging, because nothing makes such good copy as a feud.

It's perfectly within [Martin Peretz] rights [to fire a journalist]. It's a private - you know, th - it's not censorship. The First Amendment doesn't come into play because it's a private magazine.

Prejudice makes prisoners of both the hated and the hater.

If virtue & knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great security.

I can cook, I can breathe, I can live!

With that strange knowing that comes over me, like a clairvoyance, I know that I am sure of myself and my enormous and alarmingly timeless love for you; which will always be.