In America, Communities Existed Before Governments. There

As Individuals And As A Nation, We Now Suffer From Social Narcissism. The Beloved Echo Of Our Ancestors, The Virgin America, Has Been Abandoned. We Have Fallen In Love With Our Own Image, With Images Of Our Making, Which Turn Out To Be Images Of Ourselves.

There Is No Disinfectant Like Success.

Probably No One Of Us Has The True Religion. But All Of Us Together - If We Are Allowed To Be Free - Are Discovering Ways Of Conversing About The Great Mysteries. The Pretense To Know All The Answers To The Deepest Mysteries Is, Of Course, The Grossest Fraud. And Any People Who Declare A Jihad, A Holy War On Unbelievers - Those Who Do Not Share Their Believers' Pretended Omniscience - Are Enemies Of Thinking Men And Woman And Of Civilization. I See Religion As Only A Way Of Asking Unanswerable Questions, Of Sharing The Joy Of A Community Of Quest, And Solacing One Another In Our Ignorance.

While Knowledge Is Orderly And Cumulative, Information Is Random And Miscellaneous.

Our American Past Always Speaks To Us With Two Voices: The Voice Of The Past, And The Voice Of The Present. We Are Always Asking Two Quite Different Questions. Historians Reading The Words Of John Winthrop Usually Ask, What Did They Mean To Him? Citizens Ask, What Do They Mean To Us? Historians Are Trained To Seek The Original Meaning; All Of Us Want To Know The Present Meaning.