Believer

God is where the opportunistic believer wants him to be.
--Ta-Nehisi Coates

Unite

Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.
--Thomas Jefferson (Inaugural Address, March 1801)

Good Religion

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.
--G. K. Chesterton

Agnostic

A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred for the religious.
--H.L. Mencken

Concentration

Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.
--Arnold Palmer

An Election

Is an election--like the interstate highways, or the GI Bill--something we own in common, something we do together?
--Charles P. Pierce

Writing

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
--E. L. Doctorow

Smooth

Sometimes a smooth process heralds the approach of atrophy or death.
--Neil Young

Work

A great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work.
--Bertrand Russell

Evolution

Of course like every other man of intelligence and education, I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised.
--Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D. (former president of Princeton University, during 1912 campaign for president)

All the Answers

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings, who don't have all the answers, to think that they do.
--Bill Maher

Common Good

Strengthening the common good is a lot harder than protecting the comforts of a few.
--Yonce Shelton

New Technology

We shouldn't jump at a new technology simply because it has advantages; only time and study will reveal its disadvantages and show the value of what we've left behind.
--Justin B. Hollander

Giving

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.
--George Eliot

Atheism

What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?
--Slavoj Zizek

1930s

Before now, I had never really understood how the 1930s could happen. Now I do. All one needs are fragile economies, a rigid monetary regime, intense debate over what must be done, widespread belief that suffering is good, myopic politicians, an inability to co-operate and failure to stay ahead of events.
--Martin Wolf

Mad Influx

In general, do those who routinely diagnose ADHD and prescribe drugs for it ever meditate on just how awfully strange our sensorium has become, and how rare it would be that we would perfectly adapt to this mad influx of swirling inputs?
--Cary Tennis

Inequality

Absolute freedom is impossible; humans are social animals, and society is a give-and-take. I'm not arguing for absolute egalitarianism, I'm saying that the fact that there will always be some level of inequality in a society does not prove that the current level of inequality is appropriate; it's a non sequitur.
--A Real New Yorker

Love, Fear

It used to be possible for me to gauge the depth of my love for someone by the intensity of the fear created in my contemplation of their death.
--Suzanne Clothier

Empathy

The thing Romney needs to do to beat Obama is show up in this debate and not have another empathy comment. Those comments are really hurting him far more than any 47% comments. The government's not here for empathy, it's here for the law. If we use empathy for everything we want to do, that's how countries go bankrupt and bad policy is created.
--Ryan Rhodes (Tea Party activist from Iowa)

Notice

This world is too bad. We must notice it.
--Bertrand Russell