“My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all) - that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.”

“It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.”

“The courts have their job to do, and we have ours. Far too often, they get to tell us what to do and when, but the judges know that the line exists, and most stay on their side of it. I’m not about to start giving them the ground that we still own.”

“Our stories are all we have. The only thing that can save us is to learn each other's stories. From beginning to end....For every life we know, we are expanded.”

“There is no way that any of God’s children can be assured of blessings from the Most High without worthy actions in their lives…. We are saved only in direct proportion to the knowledge we gain, but the simple accumulation of facts will in no way save us if we do not possess wisdom…. Change and the development of talents and hidden qualities in each of us are produced by putting into practice the knowledge we have obtained.”

“We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked at us.”