“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.”

“If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.”

“Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”

“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.”

“It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.”

“Now, I think we can all agree that fear is a motivator. The problem is that fear can motivate us to do the wrong things, too. Fear can make the "saving of our skins" the priority, as it does in this case involving religious pluralism.”