“There are indeed moral universals — the Hebrew Bible calls them ‘the covenant with Noah’ and they form the basis of modern codes of human rights. But they exist to create space for cultural and religious difference…”

“The [articles of the Genva Convention] adopted by The International Committee drew upon...the codes of a warrior's honour...these codes vary from culture to culture and their common features are the oldest artifacts of human morality: from Christian chivalry... to the Japanese Bushido or way of the warrior... The codes acknowledged the moral paradox of battle: that those who fight ...bravely are bound [by]...mutual respect...”

“The habit of considering a man’s religious, moral and political opinions before appointing him to a post or giving him a job is the modern form of persecution.”

“When historians and literary scholars talk about the classical heritage, or the legacy to Western civilization from antiquity, they are primarily thinking of four worldviews that were written in Hebrew or Greek among the body of religious, philosophical, and literary texts created before 250 B.C. These are the Hebrew Bible, the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and Hellenistic, or Alexandrine, literature.”

“Since man is a moral being, his culture cannot be a-moral. Because man is a religious being, his culture, too, must be religiously oriented.”

“Modern materialists and religious extremists alike lack the spiritual animistic reverence for non-human beings that every culture once understood as a given.”