“Vitality is not the denial of mortality, but the grown-up way of facing it.”

“What the Enlightenment rejected in the South Sea islands was what it perceived as a stupor, the docile submission to whatever bit of the given is coming your way. And what's coming your way is unlikely to be a breeze or a cow or a coconut, but a new kind of screen you can zap or click to create the illusion that life isn't passing you by.”

“Kitsch is much more than a question of style; it's a preference for consolation over truth. Disney's version of reality is not just cleaned up, it's pernicious. Unlike the best forms of art and philosophy, it undercuts the possibility of transformation because it portrays a world that's just fine as it is--or as it will be by the time the credits come up.”

“Every time you accept the claim that you can't change human nature or you have to accept the way the world is, you are accepting the foundations of the worldview that grounded the ancien regime.”

“Home is the normal--whatever place you happen to start from and return to without having to answer questions. It's a metaphor that may seem to fit reduced expectations. We no longer seek towers that would reach to the heavens; we've abandoned attempts to prove that we live in a chain of being whose every link bears witness to the glory of God. We merely seek assurance that we find ourselves in a place where we know our way about.”

“As long as your ideas of what's possible are limited by what's actual, no other idea has a chance.”

“Human attempts to construct moral order are always precarious: If righteousness too often leads to self-righteousness, the demand for justice can lead to one guillotine or another.”