“As history has repeatedly suggested, nothing is more effective for demolishing traditional legal protections than the combined claims that a crime is uniquely dangerous, and that those behind it have exceptional powers of resistance. [On witchburning in France during the 16th Century.]”

“Christians, indeed, have a special obligation not to forget how great and how inextinguishable the human proclivity for violence is, or how many victims it has claimed, for they worship a God who does not merely take the part of those victims, but who was himself one of them, murdered by the combined authority and moral prudence of the political, religious, and legal powers of human society.”

“There is nothing more powerful and nothing more dangerously beautiful than a free mind.”

“If history has a habit of repeating itself, doesn't someone have to stay behind to shout out a warning?”

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.”

“The simple truth is that nowhere in human history is there another manwho combined so uniquely and effectively in his person both the idealist and realist factors as did Muħammad (Peace be upon him)”