...there is no resistance to the idea that what is foreign can be known. Can be understood. Can be held in the embrace of love that holds the Universe. Given this Earth on which we live and grow, given its beauty and generosity, its majesty and comfort, how can one doubt that one is loved? That in fact there is an abundance, not a scarcity of love? It is all anyone ever wants, really, I believe, and it is all around us as we starve.
I think a lot of the national Democrats believe that, you know, Iraq is a distraction and not part of the War on Terror. They've said so. And I strongly disagree.
I find it difficult to believe that I belong to such an idiotic, rotten species - the species that actually boasts of its freedom of will, heroism on command, senseless violence, and all of the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism.
... we believe in the vocation of communion and participation of our people, who day to day awaken to their political conscience and express their desire for change and profound democratization of society. A change based on justice, built with love, and which will bring us the most anxiously desired fruits of peace.
Of course, Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with anyone who is dedicated to its destruction. But while I know you have had differences with the Palestinian Authority, I believe that you do have a true partner in President Abbas.
Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can't. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap.
It is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and down.
Some of the scientists, I believe, haven't they been changing their opinion a little bit on global warming? There's a lot of differing opinions and before we react I think it's best to have the full accounting, full understanding of what's taking place.
I support the death penalty because I believe, if administered swiftly and justly, capital punishment is a deterrent against future violence and will save other innocent lives.
I don't believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security. They want us to focus on their job security. I don't think they want more gridlock. I don't think they want more partisanship. I don't think they want more obstruction. They didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. That's not what they want. They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they're grappling with every single day.
Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America's most privileged version of the level field.
Thousands of Americans, Englishmen and Frenchmen have visited Germany during the months after the national revolution and were able to testify as eye-witnesses that there is no country in the world where law and order are better maintained than in present-day Germany. That there is no country in the world where person and property are held in better respect than in our own, but that there is perhaps also no country in the word where a more rigorous fight is put up against those who believe that they are free to let loose their lower instincts to the detriment of their fellow-beings.
The man who is seriously convinced that he deserves hell is not likely to go there, while the man who believes that he is worthy of heaven will certainly never enter that blessed place.
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.