Liberals lost touch with working-class Americans because they never had to have a conversation about values with those voters; they could just rely on the courts to impose their views.
If you just rely on one model, you tend to amputate reality to make it fit your model.
That is the job of the Catholic Church, to be a balance to the materialistic drives of our culture and of economy.
Live life as a series of revelations.
Emotion is the foundation of reason.
One of the things capitalism does is, it does enhance and exacerbate the sin of pride, making yourself, the material world the center of your universe, instead of God’s will.
I am not a Jew for Jesus but I am definitely a Jew for Christmas. Christmas is one of the best things you Christians have given us, along with mac and cheese, Bono, croquet and politeness.
Bragging about what a good deal you got is one of the many great art forms that my people, the Jews, have introduced to American culture.
Memo to young journalists: Democratic victories are always ascribed to hope; Republican ones to rage.
We are all fundamentally equal souls, and if you make a zillion dollars, you’re not any better than anybody else spiritually. You’re still an equal soul.
There are plenty of team players in government who do whatever the leader says. There are too few difficult members, who have complicated minds, unusual perspectives, the toughness to withstand the party-line barrages and a practical interest in producing results.
Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation.
The legitimacy of a war is not established by how it is organized but by what it achieves.
Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.
The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain.
Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.
We live in a culture that encourages us to be big about ourselves, and I think the starting point of trying to build inner goodness is to be a little bit smaller about yourself.
President Obama was the first president not to abide by the limits in the general election.
I think we are all disgusted by the way George W. Bush’s administration has allowed honesty and candor to seep into the genteel world of international affairs.
I think that it’s an arguable position, whether with Hamas and ISIS around, whether there should be a Palestinian state, but it’s a defensible position, given the current circumstances.