“We are in the process of disabling our most distinctive achievement - our educational system - in the name of making the country more like itself.”

“But there is something about human beings that too often makes our love for the world look very much like hatred for it.”

“Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.”

“To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again.”

“Our humanity consists in the fact that we do more than survive, that a great part of what we do confers no survival benefit in terms presumably salient from the Pleistocene point of view.”

“There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”

“And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.”