“I remember sitting in the Beth Shalom synagogue in Cambridge on the night of Kol Nidre. Peter Lipton, a friend and an atheist philosopher, was giving a sermon on the theme of “atonement:” “If we treat another person as essentially bad, we dehumanize him or her. If we take the view that every human being has some good in them, even if it is only 0.1 percent of their makeup, then by focusing on their good part, we humanize them. By acknowledging and attending to and rewarding their good part, we allow it to grow, like a small flower in a desert.”

“We make choices every day, some of them good, some of them bad. And if we are strong enough, we live with the consequences.”

“Because some shadows pass by, but some are always with us. They become part of who we are, and we have to live with them—accept them—acknowledging that they grow and change with us.Only then do they start to fade, and pale into the night.”

“And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.”

“We make choices everyday, some of them good, some of them bad. And - if we are strong enough - we live with the consequences.”

“Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.”