If you want to know why the "new atheists" like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Atkins sell so many books, the answer is that they're offering the modernist version of the good old-fashioned theological term "assurance." They are assuring anxious ex-believers that the nightmare of small-minded and stultifying "religion" is gone

Old soldiers sometimes say, "There are no atheists in foxholes." (A foxhole, in military slang, is a shallow pit in a dangerous place on the battlefield.)

My work means that we have lived in different parts of the world and in each there has always been something to be afraid of. Gangsters, extremist political groups Right and Left tossing bombs into restaurants, hijacks, holdups, a city plumb on the line of an earthquake fault. We have long had a compact, with ourselves, with life; life is dangerous. We live with that; in the one certainty that fear is the real killer.

Love doesn't cast out fear but makes it possible to weep, howl, at least.

We tend to have a limited concept of spiritual death as saying no only to things we want or covet -- our guilty pleasures and selfish ambitions. But in reality, it means dying inwardly to whatever has control over us. The thing that really controls us may not be what we want. It may be what we fear. Fear can dominate our lives just as strongly as desire.

Courage is not the absence of fear — it s inspiring others to move beyond it.

Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?

Let your dreams be bigger than your fears, your actions louder than your words and your faith stronger than your feelings.

Even from a very early age, I knew I didn't want to miss out on anything life had to offer just because it might be considered dangerous.

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.... Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture ... Do not build obstacles in your imagination ... Do not be awestruck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.

The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.

When every physical and mental resources is focused, one's power to solve a problem multiplies tremendously.