“American culture has always known success, not suffering, so we’ve never known what to do with this part of the Bible.”

One murder makes a villain, millions often a hero.

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?

The most malignant of enemies is the lust which abides within.

One of the quickest ways to become exhausted is by suppressing your feelings.

The wonderful world of home appliances now makes it possible to cook indoors with charcoal and outdoors with gas.

People who have little to do are excessive talkers.

The Vice-Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won’t take it, but somebody always does.

All the problems of the world – child labor, corruption – are symptoms of a spiritual disease: lack of compassion.

There must be some great truth underlying the instinct for worship.

What ever is the natural propensity of a person is hard to overcome. If a dog were made a king, he would still gnaw at his shoes laces.

Muscles come and go; flab lasts.

An indefinable something is to be done, in a way nobody knows how, at a time nobody knows when, that will accomplish nobody knows what.

There is that in the soul of man which must respond to the highest in virtue. It may not respond at once. Human nature can easily be over-faced by examples too remote and austere.

Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.

A nation has character only when it is free.

If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped.

Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?

As to women, the Islamic faith has given women rights that are equal to or more than the rights given them in the Old Testament and the Bible.

I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.

Taking the Bible too literally is a mistake. It should be read as a guidebook of wisdom and insight.

I have a problem with people who take the Constitution loosely and the Bible literally.

The Bible is God’s chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.

If the Bible and the microscope do not agree, the microscope is wrong.