Members of weakly religious families get, of course, no religious training from any source outside the family.
When I was a child, on Sunday mornings the family would assemble around the blue-leather-covered gramophone to listen to records.
A family is too frail a vessel to contain the risks of all the warring impulses expressed when such a group meets on common ground.
And as a child I was filled with passionate admiration for acts of civic courage I had seen performed by an elderly military doctor, who was a friend of my family.
Change is tough, people don't like it, but it is necessary. Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.
Those who are rooted in the depths that are eternal and unchangeable and who rely on unshakeable principles, face change full of courage, courage based on faith.
The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself.
If you're going to pick a book and you want to base a system of government around it, why not 'Harry Potter?'
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
It's nonsense to say money doesn't buy happiness, but people exaggerate the extent to which more money can buy more happiness.
Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.
A liberal education... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.
Move over, Helen of Troy; Jenny Trout is going to wage a war on good health and fit bodies!
The checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality.
He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.
Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a 'crank.'
Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.
The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.
Every day, and in every way, I am becoming better and better.
The experiments show quite clearly that, as you resist more and more temptation, you're actually more and more likely to fail.
...Tolstoy said, happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story - then what does that make us?...
