“The elephants we have seen taunted and tormented and slaughtered by the likes of Safari Club do not have time to wait while the world's ethicists work out some centuries-long paradigm shift in moral thought.”

“The system is not working. That is how a paradigm shift begins: the established way of seeing the world no longer functions.”

“We wait, we wait,And the saints and martyrs wait, for those who shall be martyrs and saints.Destiny waits in the hand of God, shaping the still unshapen:I have seen these things in a shaft of sunlight.Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the hands of statesmenWho do, some well, some ill, planning and guessing,Having their aims which turn in their hands in the pattern of time.”

“The ritual works. The forms overcome doubts. We have learned over the centuries to weave meaning around emptiness and pain. A meaning and a pattern. We have been practising that for a very long time.”

“With the death of what Sydney Smith described as rational religon and the proponents of what remains sending out such confusing and uncertain messages, all civilised people have to be ethicists. We must work out our own salvation with diligence based on what we believe.”

“The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and pretend you're doing another! None of us, who are sitting around in some of the true limbo out-of-space, which we call "now," waiting to be saved, civilized, or discovered, have the moral authority to say anything.”