“Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago.”

“Though the continued march of intellect and education have nearly obliterated from the mind of the Scots a belief in the marvelous, still a love of the supernatural lingers among the more mountainous districts of the northern kingdom; for 'the Schoolmaster' finds it no easy task, even when aided by all the light of science, to uproot the prejudices of more than two thousand years. ("The Phantom Regiment")”

“It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and Becket. Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.”

“First the fact that the only items on open display seem to be tampons, breast pumps, and douches, making one feel as a female more soiled and wretched than even two thousand years of Catholic catechism could do.”

“The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism.”

“The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.”