God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and amo...
And how easy it is to recognize the revenant shapes that the old unchanging enemies—racism, leader worship, superstition—assume when they reappear amongst us (often bodyguarded by their new apologists...
Said the Roman poet Terence: 'Nothing human is alien to me.' The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.
In a state of conflict or a conflicted state.
An appreciation for irony.
I'm afraid the SS's relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.
Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of...
The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.
Three portraits by Hans Holbein have for generations dictated the imagery of the epoch. The first shows King Henry VIII in all his swollen arrogance and finery. The second gives us Sir Thomas More, th...
The whole point about corruption in politics is that it can't be done, or done properly, without a bipartisan consensus.
The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.
In one way, I suppose, I have been in denial for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself...
How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?
Hesitate once, hesitate twice, hesitate a hundred times before employing political standards as a device for the analysis and appreciation of poetry.
Dogma in power does have a unique chilling ingredient not exhibited by power, however ghastly, wielded for its own traditional sake.
Beware what you wish for, unless you have the grace to hope that your luck can be shared.
The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the a...
The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.
Believers fight each other over the correct interpretation and even kill members of their own faiths in battles over doctrine. Civilization has been immensely retarded by such arcane interfaith quarre...
To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the ass...