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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.

The American Citizen Lives In A World Where Fantasy Is More Real Than Reality, Where The Image Has More Dignity Than Its Original. We Hardly Dare Face Our Bewilderment, Because Our Ambiguous Experience Is So Pleasantly Irridescent, And The Solace Of Belief In Contrived Reality Is So Thoroughly Real. We Have Become Eager Accessories To The Great Hoaxes Of The Age. These Are The Hoaxes We Play On Ourselves.

Our Attitude Toward Our Own Culture Has Recently Been Characterized By Two Qualities, Braggadocio And Petulance. Braggadocio - Empty Boasting Of American Power, American Virtue, American Know-how - Has Dominated Our Foreign Relations Now For Some Decades. Here At Home - Within The Family, So To Speak - Our Attitude To Our Culture Expresses A Superficially Different Spirit, The Spirit Of Petulance. Never Before, Perhaps, Has A Culture Been So Fragmented Into Groups, Each Full Of Its Own Virtue, Each Annoyed And Irritated At The Others.

Technology Is So Much Fun But We Can Drown In Our Technology. The Fog Of Information Can Drive Out Knowledge.

Disagreement Produces Debate But Dissent Produces Dissension. Dissent (which Come From The Latin, Dis And Sentire) Means Originally To Feel Apart From Others. People Who Disagree Have An Argument, But People Who Dissent Have A Quarrel. People May Disagree And Both May Count Themselves In The Majority. But A Person Who Dissents Is By Definition In A Minority. A Liberal Society Thrives On Disagreement But Is Killed By Dissension. Disagreement Is The Life Blood Of Democracy, Dissension Is Its Cancer.