“Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.”

“And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.”

“A cardinal American virtue, 'ambition,' promotes a cardinal American vice, 'deviant behavior.”

“Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.”

“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.”

“She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly.”

“Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.”