“People who think God is on their side are capable of the most inhumane acts. (Petrov)”

“Fear exists before and after, but not while the shots are being fired, because, at that moment, you see men at their very limit, capable of the most heroic of actions and the most inhumane.”

“Divine permission, given to people who think they have god on their side, enables actions that a morally normal unbeliever would not contemplate.”

“There are heroes and, emphatically, heroines enough in this history. Yielding to the temptation to focus on their courage, however, may miss the point. Part of the legacy of people like Ella Baker and Septima Clark is a faith that ordinary people who learn to believe in themselves are capable of extraordinary acts, or better, of acts that seem extraordinary to us precisely because we have such an impoverished sense of the capabilities of ordinary people.”

“The most honest of men is the one who thinks and acts best, but the most powerful is the one who writes and speaks best.”

“DeWitt: Loneliness leads to nothing good, only detachment. And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it.”