It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technolo...
Although our moral conscience is a part of our consciousness, we do not feel ourselves on an equality with it. In this voice which makes itself heard only to give us orders and establish prohibitions, we cannot recognize our own voices; the very tone...
The more a nation gets into darkness, the more it's going to hate the light. The more it's going to run from the light. And we have a generation of people who have given themselves to darkness, and they've embraced atheism, because it gets them away ...
My main quarrel with liberalism is not that liberalism places great emphasis on individual rights - I believe rights are very important and need to be respected. The issue is whether it is possible to define and justify our rights without taking a st...
Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there i...
Watch the walls come down, whether it's in the South or on Wall Street. When the walls come down, what do we find? More markets, more talent, more capital and growth. Which means that the race and sex discrimination stunt economic growth. It's not go...
Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes practice; and those who are brilliant at being human (what Christians call the saints) are the virtuosi of the m...
I'm not a good father and they're not children any more; the eldest is in his fifties. My relationship with their mothers broke down and, because of what the law was, they went with their mothers and were imbued with their mothers' morality in life a...
I didn't grow up in one of those restrictive Christian households where you couldn't do this or that. We were brought up with a great collection of good morals and good values, but we also had fun. We'd go to church on Sunday, but then have ice cream...
When we are unwilling to draw clear moral lines between free societies and fear societies, when we are unwilling to call the former good and the latter evil, we will not be able to advance the cause of peace because peace cannot be disconnected from ...
Women are at once the guardians and the well-spring of the world's faith, morality, and tenderness; and if ever they are degraded to a commonplace level with men, this fine essential quality will be impaired, and their weakness will have to beg and f...
Morals, principles and laws are when faith is reduced to standards and those standards basically just bind us, and we become prejudicial, racist, self-serving when we're guided by these laws... When a developed country uses Christianity in its polici...
I have a weak stomach. My wife is a doctor, so she finds it funny that I actually pass out when I get my blood drawn. I physically can't stand gore on screen. I can't stand blood and guts. Not for any puritanical/moral high-ground reason. I just don'...
Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as...
First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is...
I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life. I think this doubt about the application...
Sacrifice demands the surrender of things we cherish above all else. Only out of the agony of those loses can a new resolution be born. An undying devotion to a cause greater than one’s self, and a moral duty to see a journey through to its absolut...
I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with politicians who've done something morally reprehensible but not indictable, yet still think they should be able to stay in office. The office isn't a 'right.' It's a kind of loan.
It's not the law of religion nor the principles of morality that define our highways and pathways to God; only by the Grace of God are we led and drawn, to God. It is His grace that conquers a multitude of flaws and in that grace, there is only favor...
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, ...
Christian" has an eulogistic rather than a descriptive sense: e.g. "Christian standards" means simply "high moral standards". The presupposition "So-and-so is not a Christian" would only be taken to be a criticism of his behavior, never to be merely ...
