"I propose that the government should get out of the business of marrying people and, instead, only give legal status to civil unions."

"Clinton's successor in the White House, George W. Bush, was committed to expanding government spending for faith-based initiatives."

"Getting the government to put money into social programs run by religious institutions is a practice that started during the Clinton years, when Bill Clinton advocated the AmeriCorps program."

"There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive."

"Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster."

"An idea is a delicate seed; water it with curiosity and protect it from cynicism. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Where there is no imagination there is no horror."

"Vision without execution is fantasy; execution without vision is chaos — an essential principle for the reflective life."